


Malcolm Tucker and the Bake Off of Doom

by rubywallace25



Series: Tucker, Cassidy, Smith and Kline [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Children, Baking, Broken Bones, F/M, Gen, Malcolm Tucker's sister - Freeform, Martha Jones/Mickey Smith - Freeform, Mentions of Cancer, Minor Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald, Prison, Private School, Rabbits, School Fetes, The Great British Bake Off, Twelfth Doctor Era, blended families - Freeform, cakes, lots of feels, the angry spider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-08-17 05:23:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 26,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8132101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubywallace25/pseuds/rubywallace25
Summary: Malcolm and Sam are now proud adpoted parents to Chanelle Smith (12) and Dean Kline (3).When Sam is tempoarily put out of action, Malcolm has to step up and take over the running of the bake off tent at Chanelle's school fete.Nothing bad can possibly happen, can it?Also for all the Doctor Who fans who are wondering why I have tagged this fic under DW, never fear Clara Oswald will appear.





	1. The Hunger Games

It’s Friday night.

Dean is finally asleep after having wangled almost three bedtime stories out of Malcolm.

Chanelle had warned Malcolm that her brother was a fearsome negotiator, always on the hunt for just one more chocolate biscuit, but he had failed to take proper heed of her words, and The Gruffalo, had been quickly followed by The Gruffalo’s Child, with all the voices.

Malcolm was quite a good mimic, so he’d assigned the voices of Ollie Reeder to the Snake, Dan Miller to the Fox and Julius Nicholson to the Owl.

Jamie had been The Gruffalo himself, all brawn and absolutely no brains, and Malcolm had been the Mouse.

Of course he was the Mouse. 

So, Dean is asleep.

Malcolm and Chanelle are sat in the living room, both half watching one of The Hunger Games films, they all sort of blended together for him now.

Chanelle is Snap Chatting one of her new school friends, while Malcolm is trying very hard not to fall asleep in front of Jennifer Lawrence. 

Sam is out.

As tonight is Friday night, Sam is at her Salsa Class with a friend called Beth.

Sam has a lot of friends, but Malcolm can only ever picture a handful of them, there’s Lucy, Sam’s best friend, who is passionately apposed to Malcolm and everything he stands for, Lucy’s wife Meg, who Malcolm actually gets on with, and Beth who for some reason always seems to be on the point of tears whenever he sees her.

The rest are all just names.

Before the kids came along, Malcolm use to meet Sam after her Salsa Class, and they’d go for a meal, or a couple of drinks with Beth, who’d be experiencing some fresh crisis in her romantic life.

But now, thankfully they have two children to spare Malcolm from having to listen to a thirty-nine year old woman weep about the reason, Chris won’t call her back.

Because you’re a lunatic.

Malcolm’s phone springs to life on the arm of the sofa, Beth is calling him.

Rolling his eyes, he drags the phone up to the side of his head, he barely gets his name out, before Beth announces in a breathy, tearfully sounding gasp.  
“It’s Sam. There’s been an accident. We’re in A&E.”


	2. On the Dangers of Ballroom Dancing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm loving this story so much, I just had to update it, so here it is, enjoy...
> 
> Sam's Salsa Outfit- http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=208641043

Fabio had spun Sam.

Fabio the Salsa Dance instructor, all chiselled pectoral muscles, fake tan that looked as if he’d spent the summer holidaying in the heart of The Sun, and round Spanish vowels, had spun Sam Cassidy-Tucker around the dance floor so many times, that she’d eventually gotten so dizzy, that she’d literally fallen off the stage.

This had all been explained to Malcolm in one form or another, first by Fabio who had been apologetic, then by Beth who had been sobbing, and finally by Sam herself.

Sam didn’t want Fabio blamed.

Beth didn’t want Fabio blamed.

Fabio didn’t want Fabio blamed.

Malcolm wanted Fabio murdered.

It had been a struggle to get to the hospital, Malcolm couldn’t leave Chanelle and Dean on their own, nor had he really want to take them with him, not until he’d known what state his wife was in.

In the end, the only person Malcolm could think to contact at such short notice was Sam’s useless PA Surita.

So, with Surita safely ensconced at home with Chanelle and Dean, Malcolm had jumped in the back of a taxi, and headed for the hospital.

Three badly bruised ribs, and a fractured arm, plus bonus black eye. 

Malcolm barely wants to touch his wife, for fear of hurting her.

Sam looks so pale, and despite the pain killers, pained.

Running his hands through his hair, Malcolm tries very hard not to shout at someone.

“You want anythin’ else?” 

Malcolm hears Chanelle ask, as she tucks the duvet carefully in around Sam.

They’re back at home.

Dean is still asleep, having not woken up once.

Surita has thankfully outlived her usefulness, and is gone.

Chanelle is being a star, looking after, not fussing over Sam.  
And Malcolm feels completely wrung out and useless.

“No, thank you Chanelle, I’ve got more than enough to be going on with tonight.”

Sam manages a weak smile at the young girl.

The bedside table next to her, in the space of half an hour, is already filled with a bottle of Lucozade, two bars of Galaxy chocolate, and a Satsuma.

“Although, you could do me a favour and check on the rabbits, make sure Malcolm has fed them, you know what he’s like.”

Malcolm hovers beside the bedroom door, wincing as he spots a flash of pain cross his wife’s face.

Sam in pain is the worst possible thing in the world; it hurts Malcolm to his very core.

He can’t stand to look at her, not like this.

Be a fucking man, says a loud voice in the back of Malcolm’s head.

Support you’re fucking wife, who has just managed to cripple herself.

“Oh right, so you two want to talk.”

Chanelle observes perceptive as ever.

Stealing a line from one of Sam’s chocolate bars, Chanelle gives Malcolm a knowing look before exiting the bedroom.

How does she do that, now exactly what he’s thinking, she’s only twelve. 

Sam holds out her non fractured arm to Malcolm, who immediately settles himself on their bed, next to her.

“What the fuck were ye thinking?”

Is Malcolm’s opening gambit. 

“Ye could have broken ye’re fucking neck.”

Images of Sam dead, hooked up to a ventilator, paralysed from the waist down, have been playing in Malcolm’s head, ever since he’d received the call from Beth, all that pent up fear, and emotion finds its usual outlet through his mouth.

“It was an accident, Malc.”

Sam counters weakly, her face turning white.

“Ye we’re showing off, with that talking pelvis.”  
Sam’s laugh is stifled with a cry of pain, which causes Malcolm to completely forget how angry his is, and reach for her good hand.

“Christ woman, I thought ye’d fucking died.”

Malcolm carefully strokes the back of his wife’s hand with his thumb, wishing that he could just hold her.

“Oh, Malc.”

Sam breaks down into heavy, pain filled tears.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!”

She exclaims through her tears, her bruised ribs aching with the slightest movement.

“No Sam, darl’, please, don’t cry. Hen, shit, fuck.”

Lost for what to do, Malcolm drags a handful of tissues, out of the box, currently laying between their knees, and desperately tries to wipe Sam’s tears away.

God, he loves her.

Sam is smiling, at him, despite everything, she’s still smiling, something inside Malcolm’s chest swells, probably his heart, or more likely it’s his brain.

Can brains explode from love?

“It was a silly accident. I’m sorry, I had you and Chanelle, so worried.”

“Don’t ever fucking do that, again. Stick to the plan, I die first.”

Sam’s smile grows wider.

“It’s a deal. You die first.”

Malcolm desperately wants to kiss Sam, but he holds off in case he accidentally makes her body somehow worse.

“Oh no Malc, I just remembered, Chanelle’s school, the fete!”

Sam looks stricken all over again.

“I promised Chanelle’s school, I’d take part in this bake-off thing, they’re planning. It’s for charity. Oh no, what are we going to do?”

Malcolm’s not entirely sure how, Sam promising to do some baking for a school fete, suddenly turned in a WE problem.

“I’m sure they’ll understand love, you’re in no fit state.”  
He tries his very best to soothe her.

“But Chanelle hasn’t been getting on very well at her new school,”

Of course Malcolm did know this, he’d been in the same meeting with The Headmistress, as the old crow had explained how they’re Chanelle had been struggling to fit in, and what a bad influence she was on some of the girls, and how she was on a warning, and what were they all going to do about it, and wouldn’t a state school suit a girl like Chanelle better.

Bull.

“I’ll do it,”

Malcolm suddenly announces.

“I’ll make a fucking cake.”


	3. Past Tense on a Saturday Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning of one brief reference to domestic violence & child abuse.
> 
> I'm not going to go to far into Chanelle's background with her Step-Dad, I think it's implied that she's had a rough old time of it, I don't want to trigger anyone.
> 
> Wow, now onto the awkward 1 show Segway. 
> 
> Also features more Malcolm and the rabbits.
> 
> And for anyone who hasn't read Malcolm Tucker's Daughter- Yvonne is the name of Malcolm's first wife, who he was a bit of a dick to, and who left him for her University Lecturer (She was a mature student at the time).

Friday night was one of the worst nights of Malcolm’s life. 

Even the first night he’d spent in prison paled in comparison when seeing Sam in so much pain.

Laying there next to her, he’d been unable to sleep.

The need to keep one eye on her at all times, and placed himself so far away from her across the mattress, that when Malcolm did drift off into sleep, he’d all most ended up falling over the edge of their bed.

In the end, when thin, anaemic shafts of morning sunlight had strained through the gaps in the bedroom curtains, Malcolm had given up on the idea of sleep, and headed of as quietly as possible down the stairs and into the kitchen.

He’d made himself a coffee, thick and black, full of the contraband substance known as sugar, and watched through the French windows, as the sun had struggled to make an appearance.

Malcolm had almost forgotten what five in the morning looked like, but there it had been, all cold and fuzzy around the edges.

After he’d finished his coffee, Malcolm had wandered out into the garden, he’d fed the rabbits, a chopped up apple and a carrot, and watched the pair for a bit as they had lazily nibbled on his breakfast offering.

He felt lost.  
In the end, Malcolm had wandered back into the kitchen, and found Chanelle seated at the table casually munching on a slice of toast, her hair a ball of frizz.

He’d smiled.

“Toast on the side for ya.”

Chanelle had mumbled through a mouthful, nodding curtly in the direction of the plate of toast, sat on the kitchen worktop. 

Malcolm had cleared his throat, and ambled towards his breakfast.

“How’s Sam?”

Was Chanelle’s first question, as Malcolm had seated himself at the table in front of her.

“Still sleeping.”

He’d frowned hard as he’d smeared a thin layer of butter over his slightly burnt toast.

He still missed white bread.

White bread, and bacon, and salt, and all the things that Sam wouldn’t let him imbibe anymore.

“That’s good. When I broke my arm,”

Chanelle closed her mouth, unwilling or unable to finish the sentence, instead reaching out for the jam.

Malcolm knew that Chanelle had never broken her arm, her Step-Father had done that for her, perhaps that was the reason, she hadn’t felt the need to finish her story.

His fists had clenched, and then relaxed.

“I broke a toe, once.”

Malcolm had mused, as he’d tried to lift the mood.

“Oh, yeah, how?”

Chanelle enquired, with a raised eyebrow and strawberry jam on her chin.

“Yvonne, my first wife, her parents ran this pub in the middle of fuc…NOWHERE. Anyway, they went away for some sodding golfing weekend, and we got ropped into running the dump. Von, managed to drop this massive fucking vacuum cleaner of my foot, snapping my toe in half, fucking her back in the process. We spent the entire weekend looking like a pair of medical experiments gone wrong. Fuck me.”

Chanelle had laughed, and despite everything that had happened, so had Malcolm.

Only after they had stopped did Malcolm realise just how many times he’d sworn in front of a twelve year old, and the fact that he’d referred to Yvonne by her pet name. 

Malcolm had almost forgotten about that wet and pain filled weekend in the middle of Devon, they hadn’t been married very long, he’d still had a trace of a tan from their honeymoon, Jesus, Malcolm Tucker with a tan.

Back then, in those early days, it hadn’t always been about work, they’d had a laugh, Yvonne wasn’t anything like Sam, she was serious, and naïve, and she let Malcolm completely dominate her.

What Malcolm wanted, was what THEY wanted, and what was best for Malcolm was best for THEM.

Yvonne had been his pretty, little woman in a cocktail dress, and to his eternal shame that’s exactly how he had treated her.

Malcolm’s mobile, which he’d shoved into the pocket of his dressing-gown, burst suddenly into life, and for a few seconds he’d stared blankly at the name of the person calling him.

SAM CALLING.

“Sam?”

He’s voice had been full on confusion as he’d answered the call.

“Can I have some breakfast?”


	4. Artemisia the Kid with the Food Allergy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so far for everyone who has read and commented on this, it means a great deal.
> 
> Also this chapter shifts from past to present tense as the week progresses, that's an intentional thing.
> 
> I just love the name Artemisia, it's so weird and posh lol...

The weekend was hard.

Sam slept through most of Saturday, the pain killers taking their toll.

By Sunday however, she was back to something of herself, leaving their bedroom to complain about how the dirty dishes had started to pile up, and what exactly was Malcolm feeding the children.

Malcolm was feeding the children, one of the many healthy, frozen meals, Sam had made and packed away in their freezer, in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse or fractured arm.

People kept calling, Sam’s parents Facetimed her from their sunny villa in Spain, her twin sister Bex SKYPED her from Australia.

Throughout everything Malcolm had his left hand, if Sam was his right, then Chanelle had become his left, practical and stoic, she was use to coping with difficult situations.

So, Chanelle had stayed at home, under the deep cover of having to do her homework, but actually keeping an eye on Sam, while Malcolm had taken Dean to the park for his bike ride.

Woe betide the fool, who gets in the way of Dean Kline and his Sunday afternoon park time.

Malcolm had settled himself on a vacant bench, and watched as the boy, his boy, had rode like a maniac around, and around the park, keeping to the path, and always in sight. 

Malcolm had sat on the bench under the warm summer sunshine, and dappled green leaves, and fretted, about Sam, about Chanelle’s homework, about one day having to teach Dean how to ride his little bike without the aid of stabilisers. 

Everything there was to worry about, he’d worried about, even things that could never possibly happen like Zombies rampaging around the streets of London, after all that happened already, they went around in gangs and were called teenagers.

What was wrong with him?

Crisis had been his life blood, so why now, had it felt as if he was folding under the pressure like so much soggy cardboard?

Sam had only fractured her arm; she hadn’t broken her neck, and besides for as long as he’d known her the woman had always been prone to falling over, or hitting her head.

But Malcolm hadn’t loved her then.

And he does love her; he knows he shouldn’t, that he’s being selfish, that Sam is far too young and lovely for the likes of him.

But for as long as Sam wants him, Malcolm will never willingly give her up.

That's the thing, other than seeing Sam so badly injured, which had set Malcolm’s teeth on edge, before seeing her so battered and bruised in casualty, before he’d heard Beth’s panicked voice telling him that there was something very wrong, he’d never considered the possibility that he might lose Sam.

That she might come to her senses and leave him was one thing, but that Sam might die before him was something too horrible to comprehend. 

But she was mortal like him, like everyone else on the planet, mortal, and terribly, terribly accident prone.

What would he do if Sam died?

Before Chanelle and Dean, Malcolm’s answer would have been simple, take a handful of pills and follow his wife into oblivion, but now, now he’d have to keep going for the sake of the kids, he’d have to get up every day and struggle on without her.

Morbid, it was all so morbid.

When Malcolm had slipped into bed that evening, after a day that felt as if it had been prepared to last forever, he’d watched Sam, who had already been fast asleep.

He’d kept watching her, until finally sleep had claimed him, and Monday morning had been upon them.

Monday was an even better day, when the alarms had gone off, Sam had insisted on going down stairs and eating breakfast with the kids.

She’d looked truly terrible, one arm all trust up, as she told Malcolm, an actual born Scotsman, how exactly you make porridge.

Sam’s advice had been good, since Malcolm had, had absolutely no fucking idea how to make porridge. 

Lumps galore, Dean managed to decorate most of his face with Malcolm’s first ever attempt at making a proper breakfast.

Chanelle had stuck firmly to her two slices of semi burnt toast, as she’d attempted to finish off her maths homework.

They’d worked out a routine; Sam took Chanelle to school, while Malcolm walked with Dean the yard or so to the playgroup.

But that morning things would be different, Malcolm was going to have to do both trips, drive Chanelle into school and then take Dean to playgroup, while Sam convalesced at home.

Malcolm hadn’t wanted to leave her; he’d made sure Sam was safely tucked up in their bed with a bottle of sparkling water, some more chocolate and the IPAD before he left the house. 

Sam had asked for a goodbye kiss, and Malcolm had pretended not to hear her.

He couldn’t bring himself to touch his poor, broken wife, what if he’d hurt her all over again, snapped her ribs by putting to much weight on her.

No.

No.

Best to keep her at arms length, for Sam’s own good.

So now Malcolm Tucker is sat outside Chanelle’s school, waiting for his adopted daughter to appear at the end of the day.

His knee is going mental, bouncing around in the foot well, all his eternal anguish finding an outlet through his leg.

Malcolm is tired, there’s nothing new there, or well maybe there is.

In the old days, he use to feel tired and wired in equal measure, and the idea of an afternoon nap was a foreign concept, but now, now that he’s ceased to be useful to anyone other than his immediate family, he often finds himself falling under the luxurious spell of a mid afternoon snooze.

After a hard, productive morning of writing, Sam often joins him, because she’s apparently always been a fan of naps, and when they wake up, they do other things, but mainly shagging.

Today Malcolm hasn’t had his nap, hasn’t had the chance, and shagging is just completely out of the question.

God, he wants to rip Fabio’s fucking head off, and…

Chanelle waves at him from the school gates, she’s in the company of a stern faced, tight lipped girl, who looks oddly familiar.

Holding hands, the girls hurry across the zebra crossing.

”Alright.”

Chanelle says curtly as she climbs into the seat next to Malcolm, dragging backpack onto her lap.  
To Malcolm’s surprise the other girl, climbs into the backseat of the car behind Chanelle.

”That’s Artemisia Drake, Sam said it was alright if I had a friend over. She’s gonna help me with my French. Ain’t ya.”

”Yes.”

The pale, dark haired girl agrees with an emphatic nod.

Malcolm is more certain than ever that he’s seen the ridiculously named girl before.

“Chanelle, things are a little bit difficult at the moment, maybe,”

Malcolm swallows before saying Artemisia’s name out loud.

“Perhaps, Artemisia could pop by another day, when Sam is feeling better?”

Chanelle fails to take the hint.

”I asked Sam again this morning, and she said it was fine, as long as we show you our work before Artemisia’s Mum comes to pick her up.”

Malcolm is out of the loop.

”My Mum works late.”

Artemisia pipes up from the back of the car.

“Oh yea, so can she have tea with us as well?”

“I’m lactose intolerant.”

Artemisia pipes up, again.

Perfect.

Malcolm starts the car.

Chanelle twists in her seat to chat with her new friend.

“So, Artemisia, what does ye Mum do?”

”My Mum has a really boring job; she’s the Director of Communications for the Government.”

Fuck it all, Malcolm Tucker has got Mary Drake’s kid in the back of his car.


	5. Just a Box of Jiz in the Freezer.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this was part of a much longer chapter, but re-reading it, I felt I needed some Malcolm and Sam banter, who doesn't...
> 
> I love the idea of Malcolm and Sam hiding deep emotions beneath funny words and bickering sessions.
> 
> I have read so many Malcolm and Sam fics on here, they are all so brilliant, the sort of brilliance I could never match up to, so I went for a more lighthearted, screwball, Katherine Hepburn/Carey Grant approach...I hope it works, and isnt completely rubbish.
> 
> As always enjoy...

Malcolm leans across and gives his Sam a quick peck on the lips.

It’s natural, it’s his normal reaction to seeing his wife, Malcolm doesn’t even realise what he’s done, until he sees Sam wince.

He’s hurt her.

“It’s alright, Malc, I’m feeling a lot better, just sore.”

Sam tries her best to reassure him, but it’s no good, his stomach is filled with the cold hard fist of dread.

“Malcolm.”

She’s looking at him, in that way that no-one else has ever looked at him, Sam knows him to well, Malcolm feels as if she might actually be able to read his mind.

His hands are wet, and his fingers are freezing, Malcolm finds himself staring down at the rapidly defrosting frozen lump of plastic in his hands, and then he remembers, why he’d raced into the kitchen as soon as he’d got into the house, pulled out the first thing that he found in the freezer, and then headed up the stairs to ask Sam…

“Has this got lactose in it?”

Standing on Sam’s side of the bedroom, Malcolm waggles the Tupperware box under his wife’s gaze.

“Lactose?”

Sam’s face is perfect confusion.

“Yea lactose, milk, cheese, stuff that leaks from cows!”

Sam attempts to stifle a smile, but fails miserably.

“Have you ‘misplaced’ your glasses, again?”

While, she might not look it, Malcolm can tell Sam is feeling better, she’s bantering, which is always a good sign, and she’s even managed one handed air quotes.

“Ye’re writing is miniscule, woman, no-one can read it. And, I know exactly where my glasses are, thank ye, very much.”

Brow furrowed, Malcolm surveys the bedroom quickly, he has absolutely no idea where his glasses are.

With a wide toothy smile, Sam drags the box out of Malcolm’s hand, resting it on her lap as she wipes a layer of frost from the label.

Malcolm watches as Sam peers at her own writing, she stares at it for so long; he begins to feel the familiar stirrings of triumph in his chest. 

Sam can’t read her own writing, that’s brilliant!

“This isn’t one of mine, it’s one of Mum’s,”

As in Sam’s Mum.

With great difficulty Sam pulls off the lid, and they both peer at the yellowish contents.

“Looks, chickeny.”

Sam observes.

“It looks like a big box of fucking jiz. Is ye’re seventy year old Mother, using our freezer to store jiz, because I never signed up for that on our wedding day?”

“Oh Malcolm, please!”

With a look of utter disgust, Sam thrusts the box against Malcolm’s chest.

“Why do you want to know, anyway, you haven’t suddenly developed a food allergy have you, because it’s hard enough to cater to your needs as it is?”

Sam reclines back against her pillow, looking worn out all over, again.

“Dear wife, once a month ye cater to my needs, quite spectacularly.”

Malcolm grins, that wide, unnerving grin of his, as he presses the tip of his cold finger to the end of Sam’s nose.

“Once a month,”

He loves how indignant she appears, and he’d definitely be using this time ordinarily to snog her face off, but Sam isn’t in a snogging state. 

“Try alternate Christmases, during your precious Doctor Who Special. From now on you’ll have to choose between me, or The Doctor.”

Sam’s eyes flash, they shine as she goads him, she’s fucking loving this, tormenting him with the memory of that time Sam had pretended to be a newly regenerated Doctor in search of a Sonic Screwdriver.

BEST FUCKING BIRTHDAY EVER!

Still clutching Sam’s Mum’s suspected box of jiz, against his chest, Malcolm kneels down on the floor, and rests his chin against his wife’s pillow, and stares at the side of her face intently, until Sam angles her head awkwardly and gazes straight back at him.  
A cold wet patch is beginning to form, soaking through his shirt, and against his chest.

“No contest, ye know how much I like ye’re Doctor.”

Sam’s face suddenly contorts with laughter, the bed shakes under the spasm of her giggling, and with each fresh bout, she squeaks a soft, ow.

“You’re such a horrible husband.”

Being careful not to press, and weight against her, Malcolm plants a careful kiss against the side of her mouth.

“Now that, ye did sign up for.”

Malcolm teases Sam, loving the fact that he’s made his beautiful wife laugh.

Laughing is always better than crying, crying is rubbish.

Slowly Malcolm remembers that it’s not just him and Sam anymore that he can’t just hang around in bed making his wife laugh, Chanelle is outside with her ridiculously named friend, and Dean feeding the rabbits in the garden.

Malcolm has to go and do responsible Dad type things.

“There’s a fussy kid in our house. Not any fussy kid, its Mary-fucking-Drake’s. She’s got a stupid fucking name, and she can’t eat lactose.”

“Mary, she’s lovely, she’s helping to organise the bake off thing, I told you about. That’s probably fine,”

Sam points at the box.

“I think Mum offloaded all the jiz she was storing in our freezer, that’s probably just chicken stew.”


	6. Mary Drake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cards on the table, I like Mary Drake, in the same way that I thought Cal Richards was a little bit rubbish.
> 
> However, I do love his line about wanting a chocolate biscuit.
> 
> Mary so should have been THE F***ER, as she's a perfect counter balance between Malcolm and Stuart.
> 
> As much as I love Tom Hollander, we didn't really need another shouty man, Malcolm is all the shouty man we could ever want.  
> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
> My personal feelings aside, this chapter floats about in terms of tenses, and POVs...Sam gets her first of the fic...
> 
> I love the idea that Sam and Mary like each other.

It was chicken stew.

Malcolm did an excellent job of reheating it; Artemisia Drake didn’t explode or break out in spots, or choke, so perhaps the meal actually was lactose free.

That, or Artemisia’s parents were hypochondriacs, but Mary had never struck Malcolm as one of those hypochondriacally, helicopter Mothers, she was far too sensible for all that nonsense. 

Malcolm remembers Mary, she’d been the only minister on the opposition with a brain that functioned, and a streak of common sense running through her, so of course she’d been booted out of cabinet as soon as they’d taken power, why change the habit of a lifetime.

In short, Malcolm has always been favourable impressed with Mary Drake, plus she has good hair, good hair is always a plus, he’d spent two years trying to get Nicola Murray to do something with that streak of oily, piss she called a coiffeur, but it had all been so much shouting at a completely useless person. 

Mary Drake is on time.

She’d sent a text to her daughter informing her that she would arrive to collect Artemisia at 7 o’clock, and here she is at 7, ringing the doorbell. 

How did she do that, Malcolm has no idea, he’d never been able to leave Number 10 when he wanted, or expected, or hoped, he’d been shackled to his desk, wiping arses from morning to night.

A horrible thought strikes him, maybe Ollie Reeder was right, maybe it had all gone algorisms, and macrobiotic shit. 

One look at Mary’s face tells Malcolm that nothing has changed, haggard and tired looking; clutching her patient leather handbag in front of her, knuckles visibly whitening. 

“Evening Mary, ye want to come in?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Mary gives a curt nod, polite but frosty, and that’s the extent of their interaction as Malcolm ushers her in the direction of the living room.

“Hello, Mary!”

As Malcolm closes the front door, he hears Sam as she greets Mary Drake, her voice is so full of genuine warmth that it’s ridiculous. 

Malcolm makes his way into the living room, Sam is sitting on the sofa, her broken limb resting at an angle, a snugly tartan blanket draped over her legs, looking every inch the Victorian consumptive, perhaps he is making to much of a fuss over her.  
“I was sorry to hear about your accident, Sam.”

Mary says, hovering on the edge of Malcolm’s favourite chair, poised, ready to leap back onto her feet at a moments notice.

Malcolm knows exactly what that feels like.

“Oh, yes well, I’m on the mend. I got your flowers they were lovely, you really didn’t need to.”

Since Sam’s accident the living room of their home has started to resemble an undertaker’s, with flowery offerings appearing on an almost hourly basis.

Mary’s contribution is the bouquet of yellow roses sitting in pride of place on their coffee table.

“Nonsense, what will we do without our star baker, or star judge?”

Malcolm notices the way Sam is looking at him, she wants him to say something, so he clears his throat…

“Can I get ye a drink, Mary?”

Sam rolls her eyes, clearly that wasn’t the thing she wanted him to say.

“Tea, weak and white, please.”

Malcolm beats a hasty retreat into the kitchen.

 

 

 

Useless.

Sam watches as Malcolm disappears, off to make Mary her tea.

She’d been hoping that he’d bring up the bake off thing himself, be a good penguin and volunteer, but no, of course not.

“Actually, about that Mary,”

Sam swings her legs off the sofa.

“Malcolm has kindly put himself forward to take my place in the tent. I’m still happy to judge of course, but Malcolm is happy to do some of baking with the other Mums, and of course, help you with the organisation.”

Mary stares at Sam without speaking, she stares at Sam for such a long time that Malcolm appears with her milky tea.

Sam watches as Mary turns her gaze to Malcolm, her head at an angle as she regards him.

“That should be satisfactory. We’ll have to have a second judge as well; don’t want you to show your husband any favouritism.”

Mary takes the proffered mug.


	7. Iced Cherry Cake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catriona Tucker, Malcolm's sister was sort of mentioned in the last fic. 
> 
> She's a former page three model, who married a very rich, very thick banker, and who now lives in a new build mansion out in the countryside.
> 
> She's basically everything Malcolm hates, but he loves her anyway.
> 
> Thank you for all the comments.

Malcolm was staring blankly into space, while Sam and Chanelle sat on the sofa, Chanelle running a comb through Sam’s hair, a hairband between her teeth.

Dean is already fast asleep, his seven-thirty bedtime having already long past.

Eastenders is playing on the television.

Eastenders isn’t a show Malcolm generally watches or has ever watched, but its Chanelle’s favourite, so he now knows who Phil Mitchell is.

Malcolm’s chair still smells like Mary Drake, her perfume is overpoweringly floral and cloying, and the sort of fragrance that Sam never wears.

He replays the meeting with Mary Drake over and over again in his head, how Sam had hung him out to try but volunteering him to take her place.

Malcolm glances at his wife from the corner of his eyes, watching as Chanelle plats her hair.

Traitor.

If it had been anyone other than Sam there would have been blood on the carpet.

It dawns on him that he’s actually going to have to do this, Malcolm Tucker is going to have to bake a cake, make an item of food, that doesn’t turn the stomach of everyone in the room.

He’s never made anything before, and as for cooking, well, he never had the time, and he’s always had a Mother or a wife, for that sort of thing.

God, he’s old fashioned.

No, come on, anyone can make a cake, Terri Coverley, was forever banging on about making baked goods for her daughter’s school fetes. 

If Terri Coverley can do it, well the rest goes without saying.

What the fuck type of cake is he going to make?

Chocolate- can burn.

Fruit cake- fuck off.

Victoria Sponge- fuck, the fuck off, you monarchy loving piss-artist.

Malcolm mentally scrolls through all the cake he can remember eating in his life.

He thinks about his first wedding cake, which had been a massive three tiered affair, iced to perfection, too sweet to eat, but it had looked good in the photographs.

Malcolm looks at Sam again, their wedding cake, had been two Costa Coffee blueberry muffins, with birthday candles squashed into the tops.

Absolutely pathetic, but nothing in his life ever tasted better.

He is happy to eat crap blueberry muffins with Sam for the rest of his life. 

But, as romantic as the gesture would be, is a muffin a cake?

Malcolm should look that up, or better still…

“Is a blueberry muffin a cake?”

He asks Sam, who gives a little wince as Chanelle tugs at her hair.

“I don’t think, so.”

She grimaces.

“Why don’t you Google it?”

Malcolm gives up on the idea of blueberry muffins.

“You thinking about what sort of cake, you gonna make for this stupid fete thing?”

Chanelle asks, as she wraps the hair band around the bottom of Sam’s plat.

Malcolm had been half expecting Chanelle to pull Sam’s hair into a Croydon facelift, but she’s gone a good job with a long, messy plat that reminds him of Jennifer Lawerence’s hair in one/all/any of the Hunger Games films.

“It’s not stupid Chanelle, Malc is doing it for a good cause, and for you. We’re all going to have lots of fun.”

Sam is being insanely optimistic.

“Don’t do it for me.”

Chanelle tells him, as she folds her arms across her chest, and rests her feet up on the coffee table.

Malcolm smiles, other than Sam, or Dean, the young girl is the only other person, who he would ever allow to put their feet up on the furniture. 

Malcolm’s phone suddenly bursts into life, the electric pizza leaflets have stopped arriving, and the only people who ever call him now, other than the ones who are currently in the room with him, are his sister, and his niece.

Catriona, his sister is calling him for her usual Monday night moan.

“It’s Cat.”

He forewarns Sam who rolls her eyes.

It’s no secret that his sister and his wife don’t exactly like each other.

Malcolm steps out of the living room and into the hall, making sure to close the door quietly behind him; he settles himself at the bottom of the stairs and waits for Catriona to begin.

“How’s my big brother?”

Is Catriona’s opener, she’s started every conversation they’ve ever had the same way, since Malcolm left home.

“No, complaints.”

Which has always been Malcolm’s pat response.

“How are Sam and the kids, I saw she’s come a cropper, what’s she done to herself?”

Malcolm took a few moments to explain to his sister how Sam had injured herself, removing any mention of Fabio’s involvement, because he knows exactly how his sister’s mind works.

“Who’s Fabio, he’s posted a lot on Sam’s wall. I’d watch him Malc, his trousers are very tight.”

Catriona must be on Sam’s Facebook page.

Malcolm doesn’t respond, he sits on the stairs and gazes down at the white tile that his cracked next to his foot.

That tile has probably been cracked like that for well over 100 years, and it’s still in better condition than Malcolm.

“The kids are fine. Dean is asleep, and Chanelle had her first friend over.”

“That’s nice, but the novelty will soon we’re off, trust me. Once they start clearing out you're fridge and making a mess with Sam's make-up. Not that she ever makes much effort.”

Ignoring his sister's catty remark, it's Malcolm’s turn now, to ask about Catriona’s husband Trevor, the investment banker, and Colin and Issy.

It soon becomes clear that Catriona’s real motivation for calling was to dredge up gossip regarding a possible Sam/Fabio affair.

Malcolm loves his sister, and he knows she’s only interfering for his own good, but he wishes she would just stop.

Slowly, it comes to Malcolm as he half listens to his sister, the memories of all the cake their Mother use to make for them, when they’d been children.

Iced cherry cake had always been one of his favourites.

“Cat, do ye remember the iced cherry cake, Mam use to make for us?”


	8. Vaginal Rejuvination for the Nation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I love writing Malcolm and Sam fluff.
> 
> I also love the idea that Malcolm's sister Catriona is about 70 times scarier than him, and has an on going hate fest with Sam.
> 
> Bascially Cat is jealous of Sam, because she's younger, and Catriona is use to being the only woman Malcolm really cares about, other than their Mum.
> 
> And no, Cat hasn't come all the way from Scotland, she lives in Somerset with her family.
> 
> For those of you who haven't read the other fic in the series, Lucy and Meg are Sam's lesbian best friends, their daughter Livi is a monster.
> 
> http://www.polyvore.com/good_morning_this/set?id=209496062 - Sam's outfit for Lorraine.

Sam can’t sleep.

She can’t sleep because her arm is aching; despite the heavy dose of pain killers she’s been prescribed. 

Sam’s never been good with pain, maybe her best friend Lucy had a point, when she’d once told Sam, shortly after Livi’s birth, that she’d never be able to cope with the rigours of childbirth, it had been meant as a joke at the time, and well it’s all academic now, anyway.

And after all what does Lucy know about the pain of child birth, it had been Lucy’s poor wife Meg who’d been the one to push their daughter, Sam’s Goddaughter Livi, out into the world, and Meg hadn’t really seemed to mind the whole experience.

It’s not just the pain keeping Sam awake, even without her arm all strapped up; the weight of the cast is heavy, and sweaty and itchy and well just alien.

She can’t sleep on her tummy, which is Sam’s preferred sleeping position.

Instead she’s forced to lay on her back, and stare up at the ceiling, as it hovers over her, all dark and uncaring. 

Sam’s lost her mind, for real this time, how can a ceiling care…

She desperately needs to talk to someone.

Malcolm is snoring away happily next to her, and Sam hates him for it, after all he’s not the one, who has to get up in the morning, and go and be all nice and interesting to Lorraine Kelly.

No, Malcolm gets to stay at home and have fun with Dean.

So, with her good, un-fractured arm Sam elbows Malcolm hard in his side.

He explodes into life with a snort.

“Malc, are you still awake?”

Sam asks with a smile playing on her lips.

“Jesus Christ woman, what is it, what do ye need?”

Sam feels the prick of guilt; Malcolm has after all been a star throughout her silly accident.

In sickness and in health.

“We’re you asleep?”

Sam asks innocently, feeling the bed shift as Malcolm turns to face her.  
In the gloom of the bedroom, she can just make out the outline of his features, as he rubs his tired eyes with the palm of one hand.

“Whatever gave ye that impression.”

Without being able to see the action, Sam can tell that Malcolm is grinning, she can hear the sound in his voice.

Sam wants so desperately to roll into his body, to feel his warmth around her, and that smell that is so unique to her husband.

It’s not a sex thing, although well, she’s missing that terribly too, no, what Sam really wants is a cuddle.

“Malc, will you hold me?”

She’s never had to ask before, Malcolm always sort of just known when to hug her in a way that her first husband Ed forgot, long before their marriage actually ended.

“Oh Sam, I don’t know, I don’t want to hurt ye.”

He always sounds at his most Glaswegian when sleepy.

At this point Sam doesn’t care if Malcolm does hurt her, she can’t possibly be in any more pain than she is already in.

“You won’t hurt me, just cuddle into my side a bit, please.”

Sam needs him.

Without making a sound of complaint, Malcolm dutifully shuffles over to her, fitting his body against the length of Sam’s, resting his chin against her shoulder, the end of his cold nose brushing against her cheek.

Sam takes his hand, and lays it gently across her stomach.

A jigsaw slotted together perfectly.

Sam feels warm, tingly and happy all at once, this is what she’s missed.

“There see no pain.”

Malcolm relaxes against her, his fingers splayed across her skin.

Sam doesn’t say anything else, her words float away from her as she loses herself in the best night’s sleep she’s had in days.

Malcolm smiles, and closes his eyes.

 

 

 

The doorbell rings, just as the intro music starts.

“Let’s see whose silly enough to ring our doorbell.”

Malcolm says, as he sweeps Dean up into his arms, the little boy playing with his fluffy dinosaur toy across Malcolm’s shoulder.

The door opens, and there stands Catriona, Malcolm’s younger sister, her strawberry blonde hair blow-dried to perfection, clutching a crocodile skin bag, which is probably made from real crocodile.

She smiles, well those parts of her face that can still move, and aren’t completely frozen by too much Botox, expose two perfect rows of gleaming white teeth.

She’d never had those when they’d been growing up.

Money, to put in plainly, Malcolm Tucker’s sister stinks of money.

“Hello little man, do you remember me, I’m your new Aunty Cat.”

Catriona coos at Dean, taking his little hand in her own, her nails are like talons. 

Dean giggles, and wriggles against Malcolm, until he’s finally released to go off and play in the living room.

“I’m a Vampire Malc, you have to invite me in.”

Malcolm returns a quick grin, stepping back out of the way, so Catriona can wipe her feet, and step across the threshold into his home.

Sam is going to hate this.

His wife likes to have at least two years notices, before his sister visits.

“What are ye doing here?”

Malcolm asks bemused, with one ear trying to listen out for Dean, or the sound of Sam’s voice on the television.

“I’m getting my vagina rejuvenated; Trevor bought it for me, for my birthday.”

Malcolm doesn’t even know where to start, there are just too many utterly horrible images bouncing around his brain.

“And to think, all I bought ye was a cheap bottle of perfume.”

Catriona makes humming sound, as she catches sight of her reflection in the hallway mirror.

“You can joke Malc, but it’s like the wreck of the Hesperus down there. That’s what having two fucking kids does to you.”

Malcolm winces, and Catriona continues to study herself.

“Can ye shut up about ye cunt, now?”

Catriona gives him a look, it’s a look Malcolm knows well, it use to accompany a punch in the face, but they’ve both grown out of that now, thankfully.

“We’re is the invalid?”

Malcolm’s sister always saves a particular tone of voice specifically for Sam, drenched in condescension and menace.

As if answering Catriona’s question, the unmistakable sound of Sam’s voice floats in from the living room.

Malcolm doesn’t hesitate; he simply leaves his sister in the hall, to watch his wife being interview on the television.

Sam looks better than she did when she’d left their house earlier in the morning, the make-up team have done a good job, they’ve even run a brush through her hair, she looks human, and well gorgeous.

“SAMMY” 

Malcolm catches Dean just before he runs into the television.

“Sam’s on the telly.”

He tries to tell the little boy, although he’s not sure how much Dean understands.

Catriona joins them in the living room; and the first words out of her mouth are…

“Poor Sam, she looks terrible.”


	9. Grown-up Adult Nap time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poor Sam, all she wants is grown-up adult naptime...

Sam’s not sure she’s ever been so pleased to see her front door.

Today has been a long day.

She glances down at her watch, her new watch, today has been a long day, and it’s only just gone twelve.

All Sam wants is to go back to bed, she’ll never complain about laying around like a box ever, again.

Slipping her working hand into her handbag, Sam fishes out her keys, slipping them into the lock.

Malcolm is waiting for her, he’s standing on the stairs looking pensive. 

“Afternoon,”

Sam smiles tiredly at Malcolm, as she pushes the front door shut with her shoulder.

“Sam.”

“Has Deano, gone down for his nap?”

Sam asks, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand, as she steps out of her ridiculously high heels.

She catches sight of herself in the hallways mirror, all pale features, and eye bags she could carry her shopping home in.

Had she looked that bad on the telly?

“He’s just gone down, ye missed three tantrums, and a sensational bit of story telling.”

Sam notices that Malcolm is acting strange, for a start he’s still standing on the stairs, and every now and then he glances over the banister into the kitchen.

Also Sam’s been here a whole five minutes, and he hasn’t kissed her yet.

“Dad skills.”

She muses with a tired smile, as she joins him on the stairs.

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far, it’s a wee bit early to say.”

Malcolm shrinks back against the wall as Sam advances on him.

Very, very strange, Sam thinks to herself as she tugs at the bottom of his t-shirt.

Despite how tired she feels, Sam presses the half of her body that isn’t all strapped up and broken, nuzzling her head against Malcolm’s neck.

“Sam, there’s really something I should tell ye.”

Sam ignores Malcolm’s words, and instead nips playfully at his stubbly chin. 

“Shall, we go and have some grown-up adult nap time of our own?”

Now usually a suggestion like that would have Malcolm bolting up the stairs, shedding clothes at a manic pace, but instead of that, Sam feels him tense against her, his eyes widening.

“Malc, I thought we were past the arm thing?”

Sam frowns, pulling away.

“I’m fine, it’s fine. We’re going to have to be a bit inventive, but you know what they say, invention is the mother of all good orgasms.”

Sam laughs at her own joke, the pain in her ribs only causing her the occasional wince now, as the bruising heals.

“Sam,”

She’s actually starting to feel cross now, cross and tired, and in pain, and unattractive.

Her forehead knits together into another tight frown, and Sam is on the point of telling Malcolm what a terrible husband he is, when she hears the laugh, that instantly chills her blood.

Sam’s eyes grow wide.

“What’s that noise?”

She asks, because she can’t quite believe it.

“Now Sam listen, it’s not my fault. I just opened the door and she was there.”

Sam carefully edges her way back down the stairs, Malcolm following her, clutching Dean’s baby monitor and blanket against his chest.

“Don’t listen to him. When a man says that he’s usually done something unspeakable.”

Sam bristles.

“Ye’re not helping.”

Malcolm angrily whispers at his sister through the banisters.

His sister.

Catriona.

Malcolm’s sister Cat.

God, how Sam hates her, and God how she feels guilty over it.

When they’d first met, Sam had rather liked Cat, she shared most of the same qualities Sam admired in Malcolm, clever and dry, but with one distinction, while Malcolm pretended to lack any sort of moral compass, his sister in fact had none at all.

Controlling.

All The Tuckers are control freaks, Sam had learned this early on, but Cat takes that to an art form, and then sum, it’s a good job Trevor is a complete idiot, because she might actually pity him.

After Malcolm had gone to prison, and she’d lost the baby, Sam had been at a complete loss, she’d been so thankful to Cat at first, with her offer to take her in and look after her.

It had been nice to be surrounded by Malcolm’s family.

But then…

Well, eventually Sam had, had to basically run away from her own sister-in-law.

It’s not even as if Cat prefers Malcolm’s first wife Yvonne to her, from what Malcolm has told her, his sister never liked Yvonne either.

No, Cat just pathologically hates any woman who is closer to her brother, than she is.

It’s weird.

It’s probably toeing the territory of George R.R Martin.

“What are you doing here?”

“Don’t ask her that.”

Malcolm chimes in, and Sam glares him into silence.

“How rude of me,”

Sam tries again, she can be civil, she can be nice.

“No, no, there’s no better way to say this, what are you doing here?” 

What’s left of Cat’s face that can still move, pulls back into a rictus grin.

“I’m here to help Malcolm with his cake.”


	10. He Barely Even Takes the Helicopter Home Any more.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This scene takes place before Sam gets home from her Lorraine Kelly interview.
> 
>  
> 
> So, I've tried to give some context to Malcolm's relationship with his sister.
> 
> I've read so many amazing fics on here, so many different takes on Malcolm's childhood, that I wanted to try and have a go, not sure if it's worked,.
> 
> Anyway, yea Cat is a bitch and she's mental, so of course she's perfect for Jamie lol...
> 
> Also I know Cat is a universal hate figure lol, but would anyone be interested in reading a Jamie/Cat fic?

“Are ye sure this is how Mam, used to make it?”

Malcolm attack eyebrows knit tightly together as he stares at the lumpy, beige mixture sitting at the heart of the mixing bowl.

“I wish you wouldn’t use that word.”

Cat says her head buried deep into one of the kitchen cupboards, every now and then making a tutting noise when she come across something she doesn’t like.

“What word?”

Malcolm turns his back on the cake mix, watching Dean as he happily scuttles across the kitchen floor in his brand new Cosy Coupe.

Is he giving the boy enough attention?

Since Chanelle and Dean entered his life, Malcolm has been living in a near constant state of anxiety.

At one moment worried that he might be emotionally suffocating his new brood, the next that he's to distant, not paying them enough attention.

Parenting is hard.

“Mam.”

Those parts of his sister’s face that are still mobile, twists into a disgusted sneer as she expels the word from her artificially pumped up lips.

“It makes you sound common, and Scottish.”

A bark of laughter escapes Malcolm’s throat.

“In case it’s escaped ye’re notice, oh beloved wee sister, we are common and Scottish.”

Malcolm enjoys watching the colour drain from his sister’s face.

Malcolm notices that all her freckles have gone, the pretty band of speckles that use to cover her nose have disappeared, banished by concealer or a dermatologist’s laser, it makes him sad to see his little sister so altered, there’s barely anything left of Catriona Isobel Tucker.  
“Do ye want MA help or not!”

Cat throws him off balance, as the perfect imitation of their Mother’s voice leaves her mouth.

They both smile.

A normal childhood.

Most people would be surprised to learn that Malcolm Tucker’s childhood had been normal, boring, and average.

A small grey terraced house, his Father employed as a clerk, working in one of the many offices located around the docks, his Mother a housewife, with a fondness for the poetry of Bryon, Shelly and Keats.

No-one would believe that Malcolm Tucker could have been the product of a loving home, but he was.

“It’s not our MOTHER’s exact recipe, I’ve given it a little tweak, like the crystallised lemon peel.”

That’s not what Malcolm wants; he wants their Mother’s actually recipe, not his sister’s pretentious bastardisation, but he says nothing, because she’s come all the way up from her mansion in the middle of nowhere to help him.

And then from out of nowhere Cat suddenly says…

“I’ve left Trevor.”

She drops this bombshell in such a matter-of-fact way that Malcolm doesn’t know how to respond at first, so he blinks, and blinks again, and then Dean’s Cosy Coupe bounces off the side of the work surface.

“It’s alright, little man.”

Malcolm sweeps the crying boy up out of the plastic car, and up into his arms.

Fear and shock, more than hurt or pain have sparked the tears, Malcolm cuddles the golden haired boy tightly against his chest as he rocks him gently.

Failure, he’s failed, he should have been paying more attention.

“Don’t make that face.”

Cat warns him, as if reading his mind.

“Colin and Issy, we’re forever trying to kill themselves at that age, it’s not you’re fault Malc. He’s a child, children have accidents, that’st how they learn.”

Malcolm continues to rock Dean in his arms, as Cat opens a chair of cocktail cherries, making her way over to the pair, she bends her knees a little so she can stare into Dean’s swollen, tear stroked face.

“Can you show me you’re tongue?”

She asks the little boy in a voice quite unlike her own, soft and welcoming.

Dean pokes out his tongue, and Cat pops a cherry on the end.

“There isn’t that better, now don’t tell Mummy.”

The sugar boost has Dean instantly smiling, again.

Cat pops a cherry into her own mouth.

Malcolm is both amazed and appalled by his sister in equal measure.

Her own brand of Mum Magic having done the trick, Dean is strapped into his high chair, with four more cocktail cherries before him.

Ruffling his hands through his son’s curls, Malcolm’s mind slowly turns back to Cat’s earlier words.

“Ye’ve left Trevor?”

Cat gives a rather stilted nod, turning her back on Malcolm as she adds a little extra flower to the bowl.

“That’s what I said. This mixture is too wet.”

As a family they don’t do crying, at least Malcolm and Cat don’t, they’re both bottlers, they bottle it all up until one day they explode or the sheer amount of emotion kills them, he can tell that his sister is trying very hard not to cry.

“Why? I though ye we’re happy with the witless wonder.”

“DON’T call him that.”

Cat snaps.

Mentally Malcolm retreats, today is clearly not the day for taking the piss out of his moronic, hurray-henry of a brother-in-law.

“He’s having an affair.”

Malcolm should probably feel angry, he should threaten to hunt Trevor down and feed him to his own fucking horse, but then he remembers Jamie, they both seem to remember Jamie at the same time, because now Cat is looking at him.

“Don’t you dare take the moral fucking high ground with me!”

Cat warns him darkly.

She’s right of course, Malcolm is in no position to judge, he remembers the shouty, sweary speech, that he’d once given to the non entity Hugh Abbott, about how his friend liked the deal with affairs, of course he’d been his friend, Malcolm had betrayed his marriage vows A LOT.

Poor Yvonne.

“How do ye know he’s having an affair? Can Trevor even lie?”

“Of course he can fucking lie, he works in investment banking. He’s got this new PA,”

Malcolm shifts awkwardly under his sister’s armour piercing gaze.

“No stretch marks, and a tight fucking cunt. I’m just his sad sack wife, haunting the massive fucking house in the country. He barely even takes the helicopter home any more. Prefers to stay in London, too much work on. My fucking arse, he’s never done a days work in his life. He’s with HER, probably shacked up in some fifteen star hotel, off his tits on Viagra! The BASTARD!”

Just when Malcolm thinks Cat might have stopped her rant, she takes a deep breath and continues, at pace.

“I’ve decided I’m going to take him for every fucking penny he’s ever seen, and then I’m going to buy an island, and live like Doctor fucking Moreau, with monkey people all over the shop.”

For as long as he can remember most of his sister’s plans usually end with her living like Doctor Moreau, where this particular fantasy comes from, he really doesn’t want to know.

Malcolm asks carefully.

He’s only ever seen Cat in this state once before.

This isn’t the first time that his sister has left her brainless, potato of a husband, the first time had been when Colin was around three, and before Issy was born.

Cat had been suffering from depression ever since Colin had been born, bored and at her wits end, she’d just left the house one day, running away to London, pitching up on Malcolm’s doorstep one morning.

Newly divorced, Malcolm hadn’t done as much as he could to reunite his sister with her family, he liked having her around, and then of course she’d gone and met Jamie.  
Fucking Jamie.

Malcolm didn’t even see it, didn’t realise the danger until he’d unlocked the door to his flat one evening and found his underling balls deep his sister on his brand new sofa.

His actual sofa!

Animals, the pair of them, taking the oppertunity of whenever Malcolm wasn't around, which was all the fucking time, to rut.

Malcolm had given Jamie to hiding of his life, and he’d kicked Cat out of the flat, only to immediately take her back in again, when he’d realised she’d probably only go home with Jamie.

She loved him, loved fucking Jamie, she was going to leave Trevor for Jamie, take Colin away from his Father and live happily ever after with her psycho-Billy. 

But then she’d found out she was pregnant.

What went on after that Malcolm never knew exactly, the upshot was that Cat went back to Trevor, and Issy who was probably, definitely Jamie’s daughter was born.

These are the things of which they do not speak.

The secrets they keep from even themselves.

“Oh Cat, I’m sorry.”


	11. The Worst Cake in the World pt.1

The vote was unanimous; Malcolm’s cake was the very worst thing any of them had ever tasted.

How it had gone so wrong no-one could understand, but to Malcolm at least the outcome was certain, his late Mother’s recipe for Iced Cherry Cake was off the menu. 

 

 

“…and not for the first time, I realised that pity and attraction are quite linked for me.”

Chanelle chortles at Cat’s candid observation, as Malcolm beats a quick retreat out of the kitchen, leaving the pair to load the dishwasher.

He probably shouldn’t leave Chanelle alone with his sister, but to her credit, Cat has made a real effort with the kids, his kids, Malcolm has forgotten that his sister is actually quite good with children.

So, ten minutes shouldn’t hurt, not really.

Making his way quickly up the stairs, Malcolm pops his head around Dean’s half open bedroom door.

Under the faint glow of a nightlight he can see the outline of the little boy, head buried deep into his Disney Princess pillow, one leg thrown outside his star covered duvet.

Sam was on story duty tonight, and while she doesn’t do ‘all the voices’ like Malcolm, she tends to make up stories just for Dean.

Mr Spider has had his first outing in over a year.

Malcolm catches himself smiling indulgently at the sleeping boy.

How had he got life so wrong?

This is what it’s all about, not capering down corridors, or threatening to throttle junior ministers with their own livers, this is it, this is life.

Up until now, Malcolm had lived it so badly.

Reluctantly Malcolm lets Dean sleep.

Crossing the hall, he makes his way into his own bedroom, heading straight for the ensuite bathroom, a fog of coconut infused steam greets him as he pushes the door gently open.

There Sam is completely submerged up to her neck in bubbles, her poor fractured arm, wrapped in a two plastic freezer bags, hanging heavily on the side of the bath.  
Her cheeks are glowing, her eyes are slightly closed, and her hair clings to her face in sweaty tendrils.

She looks fucking amazing.

“It’s fifty for a tit.”

A dreamy looking smile appears on Sam’s face.

“How do ye expect to keep me in Paul Smith suits, if ye undercharge like that?”

Malcolm laughs.

He’d entered the bathroom to do a job, not just perve on his wife’s quite exceptional body.

Not that he can see much under so many bubbles.

Sam smirks tiredly, opening her eyes.

Malcolm leans up, collecting the plastic jug from the top of the bathroom shelf, why Sam insists on keeping it up there, especially when she’s the only person who uses it, but Malcolm is the only one who can actually reach the thing, is a complete mystery to him.

He gives the jug a quick rinse out in the sink, and then drops down onto his ancient, and crumbling knees, at the side of the bath.

“Which shampoo, would madam prefer for tonight?”

Malcolm gestures to the great array of hair and body products, which like the side of the bath.

Sam thinks for a moment, tapping her index finger against her chin.

“That one, tonight.”

She selects a brown bottle.

Malcolm steals a quick kiss from Sam, as he leans across to retrieve her choice. 

Resting the bottle by his knee, Malcolm gets a flash of Sam’s one hundred pound tits as she obediently sits up in the bath. 

“Has Chanelle done her French Grammar homework, yet?”

Sam asks, with a hit of anxiety in her voice.

The answer to this is, no, of course Chanelle hasn’t done her French Grammar homework yet, if you could put any piece of homework off for as long as possible, that would be the one…well it would be Malcolm’s choice at least.

Upending the shampoo bottle, Malcolm pours a small quality of the golden speckled liquid into the palm of his hand.

“The last time I checked Chanelle was helping Cat clean away after dinner,”

“You left them alone?”

Malcolm rolls his eyes, as he applies the back of his hand to Sam’s hair, smoothing the shampoo down through her locks.

“They’ll be fine, beside Cat’s probably one another weird fucking diet, no teenagers after 8 pm.”

Sam goes very quiet, as Malcolm lathers her hair.

“And, you’re certain that she’s left Trevor?”

Malcolm nods, then realises that Sam won’t be able to see such a gesture, so he makes a sound from the back of his throat, which could either pass for a yes or a no.

“Do you really think he’s having an affair with his PA?”

He feels Sam tense up under her own question.

They never had an affair, not a proper one, and Malcolm should know, since he’d had well lots, during the course of his marriage to his first wife Yvonne.

So, technically there’d been a bit of overlap with that vegetable Adam, but Sam had never really been serious about him, he was a Liberal fucking Democrat for a start, and they’d only being going out for eighteen months, and Malcolm was single, he’d been single for too fucking long…why Sam feels guilty about any of it, he really doesn’t understand.

“How the fuck do I know?”

What Malcolm doesn’t tell his wife is that when he’d borrowed Cat’s phone from out of her handbag earlier, he’d discovered five missed calls from his niece, and a mysterious text, he thought had definitely come from Jamie, there were just so many spelling mistakes and weird punctuation, plus the violent sexual imagery. 

Fucking Jamie, again…really?

Malcolm should have had Jamie murdered years ago.

Even Sam, who knows everything about Malcolm, doesn’t know about his sister and Jamie, because it’s not his secret to tell.  
Only now does Malcolm notice how Sam is looking at him, as if he’s a frog in a jar.

“We should do something, you should do something. Go and see Trevor tomorrow, find out what’s going on. For the sake of our marriage Malc, I can’t have your sister move in with us.”

Pouring the jug of water over Sam’s head, Malcolm agrees to go and see Trevor.


	12. No Rabbits are Featured in the Making of this Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this chapter is a little bit angsty, apologies for that.
> 
> Also, I'm not sure if anyone else does this with their fics, but I've sort of mentally cast Malcolm's brother-in-law as Tim Mcinnerny, who is probably best known as Captain Darling from Blackadder Goes Forth, but he also got turned into an Ood on Doctor Who.
> 
> Anyway I sort of thought he was perfect for Malcolm's Banker of a Brother-in-Law, but of course, feel free to imagine whoever you like.
> 
> Also enjoy.

Sam snots back into life with the sound of the alarm.

Groaning, with her eyes tightly shut, she fumbles across the bedside table, until she manages to shut off her phone, and the noise stops.

The ache in her arm is back, she needs to take her painkillers, but she can’t be bothered to open her eyes or move, it’s just so warm and comfy.

Sam drowsily cuddles in next to Malcolm.

She always sets the alarm a little fast, so they have time to snatch a quick morning cuddle before the maelstrom of tanties and chaos descends upon them in the form of Chanelle and Dean.

Malcolm is tense against her; in fact he’d been subdued most of the night before.

There conversation in the bath.

“Have you been awake all night, brooding?”

Sam asks, cracking one eye open, gazing at the outline of Malcolm’s unmistakable profile.

He doesn’t immediately reply, so Sam takes that as an affirmative.

She cuddles into him a little tighter, resting the half of her body, which isn’t encased in a heavy cast, against his body; Sam worries the fabric of his t-shirt with her fingers.

“I didn’t mean it.”

She says with a frown.

“Mean, what?”

Malcolm’s voice is weary and tired sounding, and it hurts Sam to think she’s the reason why he’s probably been awake for half the night.

“I’d never leave you Malc, even if your sister moved in with us permanently; I’d still want to be your wife,”  
She flashes him a quick, toothy smile, before resting her head down against his chest.

“…I’d still want to be your wife, only we wouldn’t live together. I’d live here with the kids, and the rabbits and the fish, and you’d have to live somewhere else with your sister. But, we’d still be married.”

Sam’s smile broadens as she feels Malcolm finally relax in her arms.

“Would I still be entitled to conjugal rites?”

He plants a kiss on the top of her head.

“You’d get as much sex as you get now.”

Sam giggles playfully, puncturing the bubble of angst and concern that had lingered from the previous evening.

“So, that’s fuck all then.”

Malcolm teases her, at least he better be teasing.

Sam lifts her head up, to stare into Malcolm’s face, he looks awful, tired and drawn, but underneath all that there’s the glimmer of amusement, which grows into a spark that is so unique to the man lying in her bed.

“When, do I ever get my leg over?”

He asks in a plaintive voice.

“You get your leg over sometimes, when those old crumbly hips of yours allow.”

Sam ducks her head down to nuzzle her cheek against Malcolm’s scratchy chin.

“Crumbly hips, I’ll have ye know…”

Sam shuts him up with a kiss.

Morning breath or not, she’s learned over the years that the best way to beat Malcolm in an argument is with a kiss.

Before their ten minute window of ‘grown-up cuddle time’ closes, Sam stills her fingers against Malcolm hot and insistent lips.

“You still have to go and see Trevor.”

Malcolm’s forehead creases into a heavy frown.

“Fuck Sam, I will, I will, I promise.”

His voice is thick with desperation.  
“Today Malc, don’t try and fob me off.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, yes today. I promise Sam, I’ll do anything you fucking want.”

With a satisfied smile Sam lets Malcolm have his wicked way with her, well that is until Dean barges into their bedroom sobbing his little heart out over the prospect of potentially not getting to feed the ducks in the park.

 

 

Malcolm has never been particularly enamoured by his sister’s choice of husband.

It’s not that he dislikes Trevor, it’s just Malcolm really doesn’t care about him at all, he never thinks about him, he doesn’t consider him a part of his family, no Trevor Darling is just there, an attachment to his sister, Colin and Issy.

It also doesn’t help that Trevor reminds Malcolm of a King Edward potato.

His head is shaped like a potato.

His features are as indistinct as those generally found on a potato.

He has the mental capacity of a potato.

In short Trevor is a potato.

A wealthy, land owning, second son of the aristocracy, King Edward potato. 

He needs to stop thinking about potatoes…God Malcolm misses chips.

Sitting in a ridiculously comfy leather chair, Malcolm cautiously eyes up Trevor’s PA, who is tall, and pretty, with legs that wouldn’t look out of place on a gazelle.

Is that what people use to see when they saw Sam at her desk?

His bimbo PA in a tight pencil skirt?

Malcolm never saw Sam like that, well no that not essentially true, he had initially hired her, not only on the strength of her excellent CV, but also because he likes curvy brunettes, he’s only fucking human.

Anyway it had been harmless, and Sam had been married, and twenty fucking years younger than him, and, and, and well...anyway…that’s not the fucking point… 

The fucking point is, that even now with her youthful olive skin, and her perfect hair, Trevor’s PA isn’t a patch of Malcolm’s sister.

 

“Mr Darling, will see you now.”

Trevor’s office like walking into a living stereotype, all black leather sofas, polished chrome, and expensive fucking toys.

Golf clubs, squash rackets, an actual fucking juke box in one corner, and a view over London, which makes Malcolm feel like the king over everything he surveys. 

“I think, I can see my fucking house from here.” 

Malcolm observes.

“Surely not, wrong direction.”

Trevor chortles.

They shake hands with the kind of awkwardness, which is only reserved for people who have known each other for over twenty years, but have absolutely nothing in common.

“Anneli, black coffee for Mr Tucker,”

Malcolm notices how Anneli hovers at Trevor’s elbow.

“You still take it black, yes?”

Malcolm nods, surprised that his brother-in-law actually remembers how he takes his coffee.

“Excellent, and the usual for me, please.”

Anneli disappears quickly, off to be a good little Maidberry. 

Before Trevor has a chance to say anything, Malcolm seizes the advantage of Anneli being out of the room.

“When was the last time ye spoke to my sister, Trevor?”

Trevor’s potato brain is clearly flummoxed by this question, so Malcolm tries it from a different angle.

“Alright, when was the last time you went home?”

Trevor’s mottled complexion whitens.

“I’ve been busy.”

Malcolm spots the cluster of photos gathered around Trevor’s long, glass topped desk.

There are two snaps of Trevor’s horses, and one of a dog, Colin and Issy in their respective school uniforms, but mostly it’s Cat, Cat with the kids, Cat on her own, Cat with Trevor.

Malcolm wonders if Trevor has fucked Anneli on that desk, surrounded by pictures of the things he seems to value the most.

He should hit him, he wants to hit him, his knuckles whiten at the thought.

Sam would be onboard if he clocked Trevor, right?

“Cat knows about you, and,”

As if on queue Anneli appears delicately handling a tray with their drinks selection upon it.

Malcolm doesn’t need to remember her name, he just jabs his thumb at her.

Anneli doesn’t seem to notice as she presents Malcolm with his black coffee in a glass cup, and hands Trevor a glass of water.

“That you.”

Trevor looks flustered, practically waving Anneli out of the room.

“She’s left you!”

“Who?”

Malcolm wonders if he’s lost his mind, if any of this is actually happening.

“YE WIFE. MY SISTER. HAS LEFT YOU TREVOR. SHE’S NOT LIVING AT YE’RE FUCKING HOUSE ANYMORE, SHE’S LIVING AT MINE.”

Malcolm attempts to spell the situation out for the living potato in front of him.

Trevor blanches another shade whiter, and for the first time Malcolm can see that his brother-in-law looks genuinely ill.

He’s lost weight, and what little hair he had left has gone.

Something is very wrong here.

Trevor takes a long sip of water, and Malcolm starts to fret that he might had tipped the younger man into having a heart attack.

If Trevor dies Sam will kill him.

Also weirdly enough Malcolm doesn’t actually want Trevor to die, he is after all Colin and Issy’s Dad.

“Are ye alright, do ye want me to call someone?”

Malcolm asks cautiously as he watches Trevor tug at the fabric of silken tie.

“I thought it was for the best.”

Trevor intones to himself as he drags the colourful piece of material away from his throat, he looks as if he’s about to be sick.

“I didn’t want her to know, you know how Cat is around the weak.”

Trevor is scaring Malcolm now, with no recourse he finds himself on the point of calling out for help from Anneli, when Trevor suddenly paws at his arm.

“It’s cancer. I’ve got cancer.”


	13. Trevor and the Big C

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I wrote these two chapters as 1 entire ramble & it felt like a ramble, one revelation after the next, so I decided to break it up, and here is the second part...
> 
> Thank you for everyone who is reading and commenting, or just reading, I hope you are all enjoying it...
> 
> Also yeah Jamie is Issy's Dad.

Sam is sitting at the little table out in the garden, watching as Dean digs holes in the perfect grass with his little yellow plastic spade.

She’s not looking at her phone.

Okay, so she has stolen the odd glance, but only because she’s waiting for Malcolm to respond to her text.

How is it going with Trevor?

Sam hopes that Malcolm hasn’t hit him.

She takes a sip from her mug of green tea, and smiles as Dean comes hurtling towards her.

“Bunnies.”

Dean excitedly points to the hutch that sits in the garden.

They hadn’t meant to adopt a pair of rabbits; they’d gone to the RSPCA to re-home a dog, but the minute she had seen the two sad looking bunnies, Sam had known that they would be coming home with them.

“Shall we give Hetty and Min-Min their lunch?”

Sam takes Dean’s soil covered hand in her own, and leads him carefully back into the house to chop up a carrot and some apples for the two rabbits.

 

 

Cancer, Jesus, cancer, what?

Malcolm stares at Trevor unable to comprehend the simple sentence.

Trevor can’t have cancer; he can’t be dying, what will happen to Cat and the kids?

Malcolm’s own Father had died of cancer when Malcolm had been in his late twenties, that had been hard, but Colin and Issy are barely in their teens, they’re too young to lose their Dad like that.

No. Stop. I want to get off.

“How long have ye got?”

The words are out of his mouth before Malcolm has a chance to think about them?

Trevor seems to have recovered himself after his turn, he’s sweating a lot less now.

He lets go of Malcolm’s arm, and takes another long drink from his glass.

“I don’t know.”

Trevor gasps. 

“Fucking hell, ye mean ye could fucking die any fucking day? Why the fuck are ye still at work? Why haven’t ye told Cat? Why aren’t you spending time with ye’re kids? Jesus Trevor!”

Trevor fixes him with a glassy stare.

“I don’t know if I’m dying. They’ve given me a 50% chance. I’ve started the Chemo, that’s why I’ve been staying in London. Does Cat really think I’m having an affair with Anneli?”

So, maybe not dying then, but Jesus 50 fucking per cent, Malcolm wonders what he’d do if it was him, would he hide away from Sam, Chanelle and Dean in some ivory tower?

He can’t answer that.

Malcolm nods, and watches as Trevor’s face returns to a normal shade of pale.

“I didn’t think she’d notice, she’s usually so busy.”

Malcolm rolls his eyes, he doesn’t mean to, but he can’t help himself.

“Who else knows about this?”

Trevor eyes the glass door behind Malcolm, from the direction he is sitting; Malcolm thinks that his brother-in-law can just about see his PA, Anneli’s desk.

“Right, so obviously ye’re PA knows.”

Trevor swallows thickly.

“Issy.”

He manages to croak, and Malcolm’s heart sinks.

His niece knows about this, his eleven year old niece knows that her Dad might be dying, and…no wonder she’s tried to call her Mum so many times.

“Colin, does Colin know?”

Trevor shakes his head mutely.

Malcolm isn’t too surprised, like most teenage boys the only thing his nephew is interested in is Call of Duty.

“How the fuck does Issy know about this? That poor little mite is all on her own at the fucking school ye pair of cunts packed her off too, probably fretting herself silly!”

“She guessed. She’s very clever, she found a letter, and she put it all together. She gets that from Cat, from you, probably from her real Father.”

Malcolm almost falls off his chair.

Real Father…

He has no idea what his face is doing, but he’s pretty sure his eyebrows have shot off the top of his head.

“I can add up Malcolm, you and Cat seem to forget that. I can work out dates.”

Trevor does have a point there; after all he does work in banking.

“How long have ye known?”

What’s the point in pretending, they all seem to have been pretending for far too long.

“I’ve always known. It doesn’t matter, it’s never mattered, in the end Cat chose me.”

Stunned.

Malcolm is stunned.

How had he known the man sitting in front of him for twenty years, but never actually known him?  
He’d written Trevor off as just another toffee nosed, inbred twat, and alright, he may still be all those things, but he loves Cat, and Colin and Issy.

“Ye have to tell Cat, ye have to come with me know. She needs to hear this from ye, not from Issy. Then ye have to go the fuck home, together, ye’ve got a nice home Trevor.”


	14. Doctor it's me...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy...

Malcolm stops.

Malcolm stops and stares at the mixing bowl in front of him.

His hand still on the wooden spoon, and tighten.

Sam has a mixer, a perfectly good, very expensive mixer, that he could be using, but it’s three in the morning, and if Malcolm turns it on there’s a good chance he’ll wake the house up.

Another sleepless night, he used to be good at those.

His head aches, his eyes feel sore.

It’s now Wednesday morning, and since last Friday night Malcolm doesn’t feel as if he’s had a good nights sleep.

What with worrying about Sam, and now this…

Hard as nails.

Malcolm’s younger sister, his only sister, is as hard as nails, she gets that from their Mam.

With Malcolm it’s all just bluff and posturing, hiding his fear, all his insecurities behind a mask, but with Cat, and with their Mam it was true, it is real, they really are just that tough.

So, seeing Cat falter had been a blow.

It’s more than that though, Malcolm had been all safely tucked away Down South, attempting to make a name for himself in Fleet Street, when their Father had gotten sick.

He’d been twenty-eight, an adult with a fiancé, a proper job, and rent to pay, which Cat had been seventeen, and still living at home with their parents.

She’d had to stay they’re and watch their Father die, while Malcolm had been free, able to escape.

No wonder she’d balked at the idea of doing it all over again.

Of course Cat hadn’t, she’d taken Trevor in her arms and told him everything was going to be okay, but Malcolm knew the truth, that his sister had missed another opportunity to be with Jamie.

Malcolm also knows that if anyone can keep Trevor alive it’s his sister.

He’s been staring down into the mixing bowl for such a long time now that he barely notices as one warm arm snakes its way around his waist.  
Sam presses herself against his back, holding him tightly; her can feel the weight of her cast.

“I woke up, and you were gone.”

She groans sleepily into the fabric of his t-shirt.

Malcolm doesn’t want Sam to know, so he claps his hands together, and tries to hide all of the dark thoughts that had been occupying his brain.

“Well, I need the practise, still not sure about this recipe.”

Sam’s arm falls away from him, and Malcolm mourns the loss of her contact.

She comes to stand next to him at the kitchen work surface, the bridge of her nose wrinkling as she stares down at the beige mixture in the bowl.

“Are you still planning on making Iced Cherry cake?”

Sam asks with a note of trepidation in her voice.

No.

“Not sure if the world is ready for that just yet.”

He smiles at her.

Sam just looks at him, with that unnerving, probing stare of her’s that always makes Malcolm feel as if there’s nothing he can conceal from his wife.

She presses herself a little closer to the side of his body, and Malcolm feels that now familiar jolt of electricity that passes through him whenever his wife touches him.

His wife.

Even now he can’t quite believe it, can’t quite understand how someone like Sam would want to be his wife.

With Yvonne it had been different, he’d been young when they’d met, he’d still had his mop of silly hair, and he’d been relatively dashing, the world had been on the point of opening up for him, all Sam got was the grey, worn out shadow.

“There’s still a chance you know, for Trevor. I mean, its stage two, it isn’t stage four, he’s got a chance. And if the worst should happen,”

Sam pauses, taking Malcolm’s hand in her own.

“…then we’ll be there for Cat and the kids.”

Sam catches Malcolm’s gaze with her own, it’s all meaningful stares for a couple of seconds, and then he wants to…

He pulls her into a kiss, a proper one, the sort that they never had time for anymore, a hot and heavy snog…

Jesus, did he just think the words hot and heavy?

Why is he thinking?

They’re both giggling like naughty children when they finally come-up for air.

Should snogging as adults in your very own kitchen feel this illicit?

He captures Sam’s smiling face in his hands, and he forgets all about cancer and baking, all he wants to do is kiss his beautiful wife, and hope that Chanelle or Dean don’t stumble down the stairs and interrupt them.

“Ow.”

Sam winces in pain, as Malcolm catches her cast with his elbow.

He stops.

“I’m sorry.”

He pulls back from her.

“It’s fine, it was just an accident, it’s nothing.”

Sam catches the fabric of Malcolm’s t-shirt, and drags him unceremoniously into another kiss.

Malcolm doesn’t attempt to say anything else, why would he, he just ever so carefully lifts Sam up onto the work surface and…

 

 

 

Clara Oswald stumbles into the school’s assembly room, which is at least three times the size of the one back in poor old Coal Hill.

An expertly polished floor, and vaulted ceiling, there’s no smelly toilets or Croydon face-lifts here, just money, lots and lots of money.

She wonders what the Doctor would do if he could see her now.

But he can’t because Clara told him a lie, and now she’ll never see him again, but that’s for the best, he’s probably off being the Queen of Gallifrey right now, she hopes he’s happy.

No more whizzing off around the universe for Clara Oswald, this is her life now, and as empty as it may appear in comparison, well, well, well…

A posh school has reached out its hand to Coal Hill, and Clara has been selected as the representative peasant to judge some silly baking competition. 

She did use to be Soufflé Girl. 

Clara grins at the memory, she’s still grinning like a loon when she hears her own name.

“Miss Oswald?”

A stern, efficient looking woman with a sleek, iron grey bob, and a clipboard pressed tightly against her blouse, is staring down her glasses at Clara.

“That’s me.”

She holds out her hand by way of a greeting, but the woman before her simply nods, ticking something off her clipboard.

Clara’s cheeks burn, and then she sees him, The Doctor, her Doctor striding towards her, not being the Queen of Gallifrey at all, but instead holding some strange woman’s hand.

Who is she, the brunette with her clearly broken arm in a sling?

Has The Doctor gone and replaced Clara already?

“I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Clara tries her best to sound casual, as she rocks backwards on her heels.

“Is this another otter, thing?”

All three of the people standing in front of her just stare; even The Doctor is looking at her as if he doesn’t know her.

“I’m Mary Drake, I believe we spoke on the phone.”

Clara feels her head bob.

Mary Drake goes on to introduce the woman holding on tightly to The Doctor’s hand as Sam, Sam Cassidy-Tucker, and Clara thinks she’s heard that name before.

He’s still looking at her as if he doesn’t have a clue who she is.  
It shouldn’t hurt, but it does, it really, really does.

When Clara can’t stand it any more she says…

“Doctor, it’s me, Clara.”


	15. Shake that I Dare You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, here's more Clara Oswald.

“Can we go now?”

Chanelle manages to articulate exactly what Malcolm is thinking.

Why are they hanging around, what is Sam keeping them waiting about for?

Malcolm watches Chanelle from the corner of his eye, as she catches her little brother Dean around his chubby middle, and drags him up onto her lap.

“I don’t know, love.”

The three of them are stuck waiting down one of the long corridors of Chanelle’s new school, Chanelle and Dean occupying the same hard plastic chair, while Malcolm leans against at nearby wall, looking belligerent. 

It’s been actually ages since Sam abandoned them to go chasing after Mary Drake, Malcolm has always suspected that his wife might be a closet Tory.

Okay, no that’s a lie.

As if seeking to underline the frustrated misery of Malcolm’s current predicament, his stomach starts rumbling, and all the mentions of cake has set the traitorous thing a-gurgling. 

He folds his arms across his chest, giving his watch a meaningful glance.

“This is so crap for my rep. No-one stays behind at school.”

Chanelle moans, and while Malcolm genuinely sympathises with her plight, he still picks her up on her language.

“Ah, less of that now, young lady, little ears.”

Malcolm warns Chanelle with a waggle of his finger.

There had been times, many, many happy times when the slightest rebuke from his would reduce adults to puddles, but the wee slip of a girl before him simply rolls her eyes.

Eye rolling at Malcolm. F. Tucker unheard of.

“This from the Scottish Sweary-man in the corner.”

Chanelle laughs, and Dean joins in, the pair of them are in open revolt, this is all Sam’s fault.

Out of nowhere, however Chanelle quickly changes the subject.

“Can we have McDonalds for tea tonight, I’m sick of all that healthy crap Sam keeps feeding us.”  
“Fuck, yes!”

Malcolm replies without thinking.

Right on queue, as if predestined to always discover Malcolm at his worst when it comes to ‘Dad Skills’, Sam appears, her heels clicking against the oh-so polished floor. 

Malcolm smiles at the sight of her, he can’t help it, every time he sees Sam it’s like seeing her for the first time all over again.

“Where have ye been?”

Malcolm frowns down at Sam, attempting to give her his best bollocking face.

His tummy rumbles again, shattering any sort of illusion.

“Sorting things out with Mary, the second judge dropped out at the last minute, so we’ve had to get an emergency replacement.”

There’s no easy way to say this, but Sam Cassidy-Tucker is a walk-over, a bleeding heart for limpy dogs, and cats with eye-patches, the woman lacks the ability to say NO when it comes to a good cause.

“Why, the fuck is that ye’re problem? Why are ye getting so involved with all this wank?”

Sam looks at Malcolm with a face that literally screams murder, storm clouds gather over her features, not simply because he has used the words fuck and wank in front of the children again, but because she seems genuinely hurt by his response. 

“I am involved with this because of our,”

Malcolm knows that Sam is on the point of referring to Chanelle as THEIR daughter for the first time, but she quickly pulls back.

“…Chanelle.”

Catching him by the sleeve of his jumper, Sam gives the kids a quick smile, before dragging Malcolm further up the corridor and out of ear shot.

“You know how hard things have been for Chanelle, she’s so far behind all the other girls of her age, Mary put a good word in for her, when the other governors were thinking of asking us, Chanelle, well to LEAVE. Mary didn’t have to do that,”

Malcolm suddenly feels incredibly guilty.

Sam looks as if she’s on the point of tears.

“I know Sam, I’m,”  
Malcolm is on the point of apologising when Sam brings him up short.

“I’ve got a banging headache, and I have to drag my arm around in its own tomb. Do you really think, I want to spend my afternoon ringing around local comprehensives begging them to send over one of their underpaid, overworked facility, to judge our silly baking competition on their day off? We’re not even paying them?”

“No, but Sam, I,”

For only the second time in his life Malcolm fights a battle to get his words out, and fails miserably.

“I’m doing this for Chanelle.”

Sam concludes with a hint of chin wobble.

Malcolm wants to throw his arms around her, he wants to cover his beautiful, clever, giving, selfless, perfect wife in kisses, but Sam’s too angry to let him, this is a public place, and the kids are still watching.

“Now, you are going to shut the fuck up, you are going to behave, and you are going to come with me to meet Miss Oswald from Coal Hill school.”

Malcolm does what he is told.

 

“Doctor, it’s me Clara.”

The truth is Malcolm barely registers Miss Clara Oswald until she says that.

Doctor, it’s me Clara.

Now he’s looking at her, now he can see the pretty, brunette, who is far too young to be a teacher, standing before him.

Malcolm like everyone else knows that Coal Hill School is one of the worst schools in London, he’s read the headlines along with everyone else, kids going missing, bits of the school exploding, not to mention the SATs, but have things gotten so bad for that school, that they are now forced to employ, to put it nicely, the sort of people who would be rejected by the Civil Service?

Even Robyn Murdoch could run rings around Miss Oswald.

“Umm Clara, this is my husband, Malcolm, he’s going to be taking part in the competition.”

 

 

Husband.

Husband?

HUSBAND?

Perhaps Clara has turned one page too many, but since when was The Doctor, her Doctor married?

Alright, so there’s been River Song, and The Doctor had mentioned having a Granddaughter, and Dad Skills at one point, which all sort of required a woman or a wife for but, but, but…

Sam Cassidy-Tucker is clearly human.

She’s a real human woman, not a Time Lady with impressive hair, or some vague figure in his past, she’s real, as real as Clara is herself, and just as human.

Clara’s brain seems to be going around in circles.

She can’t take any of it in, it’s all just so, impossible.

Pacing, pacing is good, so she starts to pace, back and forth, until…Clara realises how ridiculous she must look, and promptly stops.

Whatever is going on The Doctor must have a plan, he must be here for a reason, he must be with Sam Cassidy Tucker for a reason, and he must be pretending never to have laid eyes on her for a reason.

HA! Reasons!

Clara can be good at being The Doctor when she wants to be, she can keep up with him, whatever is going on, she doesn’t need him to tell her, she’ll just, just work it out on her own.

So, until she's worked out what’s going on, Clara decides to play dumb, just as The Doctor wishes.

“I’m sorry,”

Clara slaps the palm of her hand across her forehead, in the internationally recognised symbol; of sorry I’m a moron.

“…it’s just you’ve got one of those faces.”

He really, really doesn’t.

“You look a lot like my Doctor.”

Finishing with a dazzling smile, Clara Oswald holds out her hand to Malcolm Tucker.

Shake that, I dare you!


	16. How Deep Does the Rabbit Hole Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, the timeline with this is in true TTOI and ITL style completely all over the place, all you sort of have to know is that in Clara's personal timeline this is all taking place before Last Christmas, and after she's said goodbye to The Doctor for the first time at the end of Death in Heaven.

Before Chanelle and Dean came along life in The Cassidy-Tucker household had a decidedly slower pace.

There was for instance no mad dash to be the first in the bathroom of a morning, no great war over the remote control, no running low on bread, or milk or toilet rolls.

Order.

Now everything seems to be in a state of rush, a catastrophe, on the point of panic, and Malcolm utterly loves it.

He soaks it in as he takes a bite out of his toast, surveying the chaos around the breakfast table.

Dean happily splashing his spoon in his plastic bowl of coco pops with only the wild abandon that a three year old or a tornado can properly muster.

Chanelle has once again left her homework to the last minute, and is desperately attempting to rectify by scribbling away like a mad thing.

And Sam, his beloved wife, his attempting to put on her mascara left handed, her small make-up mirror propped up against the toast rack.

This is it, this is real life, this is the sort of crazy world that he and his younger sister Catriona were raised in.

It’s funny to think how much he’s missed it.

Well not funny really, it’s actually quite tragic, all that time spent, well wasting time, in the pursuit of what?

Still, now he has it, the thing he never knew he wanted.

Malcolm reaches across the table in search of the butter dish, scraping off the top layer, he finds to his horror one long strand of brown hair, which is completely the wrong shade for Chanelle, and can only belong to one person.

“Ye’re malting again, woman.”

Malcolm in forms Sam, picking the stray strand of hair off his knife, holding it up so that she can get a good look at it.

Sam barely registers the hair.

 

“I don’t malt.”

She tells her reflection.

“Ye do malt.”

Malcolm counters. 

“I think, I feel sick.”

Chanelle announces, and to her credit she does look a bit green around the gills.

Malcolm quickly discards Sam’s offending hair, wipes his fingers on his pyjama bottoms, and checks Chanelle’s temperature with the catchall hand across the forehead technique. 

Despite the fact that Chanelle is cringing so far into her chair, that Malcolm barely lays a finger on her she’s not hot, she’s not running a temperature, and her feelings of nausea probably have to do more with her maths assignment, than any sort of aliment. 

“Ye feel fine.”

“I feel sick.”

Chanelle grimaces.

“You’re not having the day off school.”

Sam says, glancing up from her mirror, half her carefully applied mascara now covering her eyelids, she's even managed to get some on her mouth.

“But,”

“No Chanelle, it’s the end of term on Friday, you’ve just got to struggle through two more days.”

Chanelle opens her mouth, but she’s quickly cut off by the sudden ringing of the doorbell.

 

 

Clara has called in sick, it’s not something she’s ever done before, in fact she’s never done it before, mainly because The Doctor always gets her back in time, and colds just aren’t her thing.

Today, however Clara Oswald has called in sick two days before the end of the school term, because she’s been up all night searching the internet trying to work out what’s going on.

She’d started with the name that sounded strangely familiar to her, the name of her ‘replacement’ Sam Cassidy-Tucker, and she’d busked it from there.

Sam Cassidy-Tucker is a successful children’s author with her own Wikipedia page, which is helpful.

Author of the wildly popular ‘The Angry Spider’ series, Sam lives in North London with her husband the former director of communications for the Labour Party Malcolm Tucker.

Clara had then gone on to open a can of worms when she’d Googled Malcolm Tucker’s name.

A career spanning decades, a massive public trial, time spent in prison.

One thing was clear either Malcolm Tucker was real or, or, or…well, the only thing Clara could think of was Zygons.

By that point it had been 4 o’clock in the morning, but even now leaning against a brick wall, sumptuously watching the front door of the Victorian Villa across the road, Clara is happy to stand by her Zygon theory, what else could account for it?

Somehow the Zygons must have The Doctor, they must be using his image enter a baking competition at a local school? 

Stranger things have happened, Clara should know, she’s been some of them.

Clara tenses up as the front door opens, her large eyes narrow as she watches two women and a teenage girl exiting the house.

She’d seen the young Asian woman go in around thirty minutes earlier, she’d exited the taxi, that is still waiting, and managed to drop her phone, before she’d rung the doorbell.

Are Zygons clumsy?

The young Asian woman jumps back into the taxi, followed by the miserable looking teenager, resplendent in her straw boater, black blazer and yellow and black tartan skirt, no wonder she looks so unhappy.

Sam Cassidy-Tucker is the last one to climb into the taxi, and only after…

Clara finds herself studying her hands for a few moments as the man who looks just like The Doctor kisses the woman who looks nothing like her; she busies herself with thoughts of anything other than…well…

She only looks up once she hears the taxi draw away, the front door closes.

Clara is on the point of wondering exactly how to proceed with her investigation, when a silver car suddenly pulls up in front of her.

“Miss Oswald?”

Clara reacts to the sound of her name, and then out of nowhere darkness suddenly claims her.

 

 

“Miss Oswald?”

With a groan Clara floats back up into some semblance of the real world.

Her head aches and her mouth feels like it’s made out of carpet.

But, she’s still alive.

Still alive and sat in a comfortable chair.

With her head spinning Clara tries to take in her surroundings. 

“Here, drink this.”

An unseen woman’s voice advices and a glass of something violently violet is thrust under her nose.

Clara takes the glass and sniffs at it.

“It will counter act the effects of the sedative, if I wanted to poison you, believe me, you’d be dead by now.”

That’s not a very comforting thought.

Against the logical part of her brain, which is screaming away for all it’s worth, Clara holds her nose and drinks.

She doesn’t get any bigger.

She doesn’t shrink.

Most importantly she hasn’t died.

The fog around her clears and Clara finds herself sitting in a very comfortable chair, facing a long desk, in a non-descript office.

“Apologies for the hit, Mr Smith can sometimes get a little over zealous when it comes to the sedation pellets.”

Clara finds a small pea sized lump on the side of her neck, so that’s how they’d done it.

Her hand shakes as she places her now empty glass on the desk.

“Who are you? Where am I?“

An attractive woman with dark skin, large brown eyes and glossy hair makes her way around the desk.

Clara knows her.

“First question, My name is Doctor Martha Jones-Smith. Second question, welcome to Torchwood One.”


	17. Don't Cross the Streams.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This pics up from the end of Clara and Martha's conversation, so enjoy.

As in Martha Jones, THE Martha Jones?

Well, Smith-Jones if they were getting technical. 

Clara knows her, well she knows OF her.

The first time she’d encountered Martha, was when The Tardis has gleefully shown Clara the roll call of The Doctor’s previous companions, all of them attractive, most of them women, Martha’s face had been there, one among many.

The second encounter had been in The Tardis’ great library, when during a search for some light bedtime reading, Clara had pulled out a book called The Year That Never Was, not a particularly snappy title, but something about this lesser thumbed tome had screamed out to her to be read, so like all good English Graduates Clara had read it.

Half way through her book however, Clara slowly began to realise that what she was reading was actually a diary, a record of events that had been erased from time, a year that had only happened for a few.

The book had been written by Martha, the woman seated before Clara now, an old companion of The Doctor. 

“So, you’ve heard of me then?”

Martha says with a broad smile, displaying two rows of brilliant white teeth.

Dumbly, Clara feels her head nodding in response; her brain seems to have stalled.

“I appreciate all this must have come as quite a shock, would you like a glass of water?”

Martha seems genuinely concerned.

“No, I’m all good for liquids for the time being.”

Somehow Clara manages to find her voice.

Martha gives her a look that reminds Clara of an indulgent parent, she doesn’t like this, even though The Doctor has the ability to surpass her in every single way he usually makes her feel as if she’s at least some what of an equal. 

“What exactly is going on?”

Clara demands, at last finding some of her old fire, the effects of the sedative having left her system.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

Clara answers without thinking, pulling herself up to her full height, which is alarmingly unimpressive; she squares her chin and says…

“I’m ready for anything.”

“I can see why, The Doctor likes you.”

Martha laughs, hearing the woman in front of her mention The Doctor’s name does something strange to the pit of Clara’s stomach.

How long has it been since she last saw him?

“Alright then, Clara Oswald it would appear that The Doctor has left you in a parallel Universe. We don’t think he did it on purpose, he probably doesn’t even know what he’s done, well you know what he’s like,”

There’s that odd feeling in Clara’s stomach again.

Even though Clara is aware that she isn’t the first person to travel with The Doctor, she’d let herself believe that she was the one who knew him the best, but here, now, is a woman who knows him just as well as her, who was prepared to walk the face of the planet to save his life.

“You’re not the first; a similar thing happened to Sarah-Jane Smith, U.N.I.T were able to restore her to her proper Universe without The Doctor’s intervention.”

Just one of many.

Snap out of it, Clara tells herself, U.N.I.T means Kate and Osgood, U.N.I.T means people she knows, people she can trust.

“I want to see Kate Stewart.”

Martha glances down at the tablet on her desk.

“Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, Chief Scientific Officer for U.N.I.T?”

Martha questions, raising one perfectly shaped eyebow, Clara nods her head.

“I’m sorry, but she doesn’t exist here, as I said Parallel Universe, we don’t have a version of her, in fact we don’t have a U.N.I.T at all, government cuts.”

Clara glances around the office, her eyes seizing upon the black letters on the wall behind Martha’s desk, Martha follows her gaze.

“Ah well, Torchwood works outside of the government.”

Clara doesn’t like the sound of that, words like extraordinary rendition suddenly pop into her head. 

“Let me get this straight, you’re saying that The Doctor has accidentally dropped me off in a Parallel Universe, but how can that be true, I saw my Gran last week, I work at the same school, I’ve always worked at, and…”

Danny Pink is still dead.

“I know it must be hard, confusing, I barely understand it myself. All I can tell you is that she is your Gran, that, that is your job, all those things belong to Clara Oswald, only you’re not her, not our Clara Oswald.”

Clara blinks, because she has no idea what to do with the rest of her face.

Martha skilfully interrupts her silence. 

“The version of Clara Oswald that belongs in this Universe, never travelled with The Doctor, she’s never met him. After the death of her,”

Martha pauses.

“After Danny died, go on.”

It still hurts Clara to say his name.

“She went travelling, but not with The Doctor, at this very moment she’s backpacking her way around South America.”

Clara tries to let it sink in, the idea that out there somewhere there’s another version of herself travelling around the world instead of travelling around space and time.

She’d like to meet herself.

“I’ve never travelled with The Doctor.”

Martha says in a sombre voice, her smile having vanished.

“But I saw you, on The Tardis you have a record, you know him.”

“Martha Jones has travelled with The Doctor, but I’m not that version, the only reason I know anything about her is because,”

But Martha stops talking, whatever she was about to say, she doesn’t.

“I share the some of the same memories as that Martha Jones, but we’re different people.”

Clara starts thinking again, all this begins to lead her to a conclusion. 

“They’re not Zygons are they?”

She asks referring to Sam Cassidy-Tucker, and the man who looks just like The Doctor.

Martha shakes her head.

“No they’re not. Ianto has managed to dig up some information on them as they should exist in your Universe.”

Clara catches the flash of a very large diamond engagement ring as Martha hands her the tablet, there’s a personnel file on it, marked with a government seal and a much younger picture of The Doctor.

Malcolm .F. Tucker.  
Director of Communications.  
Born- 14th January 1958.  
Died- 14th April 2005.  
Murdered during the Slitheen attack upon London.

Murdered that was a particularly emotive word.

2005 that was the year that Clara’s Mum had died, she’d been so wrapped up in her own grief that she barely noticed the fate of the rest of the world.

Clara slides to the next file.

Samantha Victoria Cassidy.  
Former P.A to Malcolm Tucker.  
P.A to James McDonald as of 2005.  
Born-31st October 1978.  
Died- 8th July 2006.  
Killed during The Battle of Canary Warf.

“They’re both dead?”

There is an extra note added to Sam’s file, the mention of a daughter called Sophia Isobel Tucker who is now living in the care of her Grandparents.

Clara thinks about her Mum again, she thinks about Danny lying awake at night in that children’s home.

That poor little girl.

“Ms Cassidy was particularly unlucky, she happened to be visiting Canary Warf with the new Director of Communications when Torchwood One came under attack.”

Not Zygons.

Clara hands the tablet back to Martha without another word.

“Can you send me back to where I belong?”

Clara already knows the answer.

“We have one of our finest minds, Tosh Sato working on it now. But truthfully, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Tosh is brilliant, but,”

Clara cuts Martha off asking…

“What if the other Clara, comes back and wants her old life back?”

Martha’s smile returns wider and brighter than ever before.

“Well, I was hoping you might ask that.”

She grins away, and despite everything Clara finds herself smiling back.

“Clara Oswald, how would you like to work for Torchwood?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I liked the idea that Nicola Murray was brought in to take over DoSaC by Harriet Jones after Hugh Abbott & Malcolm were killed by the Slitheen.  
> I can imagine Nicola & Harriet being friends.  
> I also think that poor Sam was probably on maternity leave when Malcolm was killed.  
> Also that Jamie replaced Malcolm & kept Sam on as his PA only for them both to die at Canary Warf.  
> On a happier note my two favourite Torchwood characters Ianto & Tosh are both still alive & working at Torchwood 1 with Martha & Mickey.  
> I borrowed the name of Randal & Lix's daughter in The Hour for Malcolm & Sam's daughter.


	18. Blueberry Muffins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, yes I know Terry Nation is just one of many people who formed the amazing Universe of Doctor Who, but I like the idea that he was a former companion, around the same time as Susan, Barbara and Ian, who went rogue, when he left the Tardis and betrayed many of The Doctor's secrets in his screenplay FOR MONEY.  
> Because of this The Doctor cut him out of his history, so Clara has absolutely no idea who he is.
> 
> I've tried to do a bit of clumsy foreshadowing with the fates of Terry and Clara, since Clara's fear is the fact that she'll be forgotten by The Doctor, and then well she sort of is...
> 
> Anyway enjoy...

Sam unlocks the front door, and the first thing that greets her is the smell of burning, the second thing is the incessant beep of the fire alarm.

“Malcolm! Dean!”

Abandoning caution and her handbag on the doorstep, Sam rushes down the hall and into the kitchen where she finds her husband stood on a chair, surrounded by smoke, and trying to fan the offending alarm with a tea towel.

Her heart rate slows, and she starts to cough. 

“I’m going to take the batteries out this time, ye can’t stop me woman. I’m going to take the batteries out, and then I’m going to beat this fucking thing to death!”

Malcolm growls through tightly clenched teeth, as threats go it’s not one of his best, since getting married Sam has noticed that her husband’s once inventive vocabulary of violence has diminished somewhat.

Coughing and spluttering, Sam fights her way through a cloud of thick grey smoke, the source of which appears to be flooding from the gaps in the oven.

Has he set her brand new oven on fire?

Sam shoots Malcolm a dark look, but he’s too busy with the smoke alarm to notice.

Grabbing a pair of nearby ovengloves, Sam opens the oven, a stream of even thicker, greyer smoke causes her to wretch.

Dragging, what appears to be her very best baking tray out of the oven, she rushes towards the French Windows, smoke belching tray still in hand.

Thankfully the French Windows are open, without giving it a second thought, Sam dumps her best baking tray and the chard thing inside it in one of Dean’s deep holes, before retreating back into the safety of the kitchen.

“What on earth is going on?”

 

 

Clara lets herself back into her flat.

Only it isn’t her flat.

Why hadn’t she noticed that before?

It’s the same building, the very same block of flats, the four small rooms are the same, but the colours are different, blue and greens instead of oranges and browns.

She’s always hated blues and greens, preferred earthier tones.

Clara has been living in rooms that are completely the wrong colours and never noticed.

“Do you want a cup of tea, coffee, anthrax?”

She asks Martha, as the older woman follows her inside her home, which isn’t her home.

“Anthrax please, two sugars.”

Martha shoots back with that smile of her’s, despite everything Clara finds herself liking Doctor Martha Jones-Smith more and more.

Clara leads Martha into the living room, a dull shade of teal, while she scurries into the kitchen, a bright cornflower blue.

From the drainer Clara grabs two mugs, which both happen to have her name printed on them, only in different fonts, she has these exact mugs back in her own flat.

Clara opens the flap between the living room, and the kitchen, a feature she doesn’t have in her real flat.

“If these worlds are parallel, why aren’t they more different?”

She asks, catching Martha as she goes through a pile of Clara’s unfinished marking.

“Well, they are different.”

Clara thinks about this for a moment.

“No, but, you know what I mean, I mean, well I’m not sure what I mean.”

Clara feels as if she’s tying herself up in knots, so instead of letting her brain explode, she goes back to make two cups of tea.

“I do know what you mean. It’s as hard to explain as it is to understand. All I can really tell you is that things are different here.”

Tea successfully made, Clara wanders out of the kitchen, handing Martha her hot beverage of choice.

“Sorry all out of anthrax, you’ll have to have tea instead.”

Steaming cups in hands, they both sit on Clara’s leather sofa, which isn’t her sofa at all.

She must try to be more careful around the place; she doesn’t want the other Clara to return to find coffee rings, and unexplained stains.  
Be a caretaker.

Take care of this Clara’s life.

She thinks of The Doctor then, and it hurts.

“Oh yeah, so how is it different, other than the dead people not being dead?”

Clara thinks about asking if everyone in this version of reality is dead in Clara’s own, and vice-versa, but she remembers that the other version of herself, the one that belongs here, if off backpacking around South America because her Danny Pink is as dead as Clara’s.

So, no clearly this isn’t some wonderful do-over after life.

Clara’s also pretty certain that Martha is alive and well in both Universes.

“Hardly any aliens and they think The Doctor is a character from a TV show.”

Clara almost drowns herself in her own cup of tea, coughing and spluttering, she manages to pour most of it onto the OtherClara’s carpet.

So much for being a caretaker.

“I know. It’s hard to believe, but I use to be a fan, that was before I joined Torchwood, before I,”

Martha stops talking, her smile freezing as the tips of her fingers brush against her left temple, her large brown eyes go glassy and unfocused for the briefest of moments, but then she’s back and animated again, as if nothing had ever happened, a blip.

“I use to fancy one of the actors like crazy, everyone did. Anyway, it’s all that Terry Nation’s fault, you won’t have heard of him, but he was from this Universe, and he travelled with The Doctor, but rather than just go mad, or missing, or shut up, like the rest of us,”

Martha shakes her head from side to side.

“You and the other Martha. Old Terry decided to turn it all into a screenplay.”

In the archives of the many, many people who have travelled with The Doctor before her, Clara had never read any about anyone called Terry Nation, is that was happens when you offend The Doctor, he writes you out of the history of his life?

Is that what’s waiting for her?

Has it already happened?

“It’s good old fashioned Saturday night family television, and they get around the various actors wanting to leave by having them Regenerate.”

Clara decides to forget about the stain seeping into the OtherClara’s carpet. 

“Regenerate?”

She wrinkles her nose up at the strange word.

“He changes his face, every four or five years, sometimes less if Hollywood come calling.”

But The Doctor has always looked the same, he’s always been grumpy and grey from the first day she met him.

Clara takes a sip of her tea.

“That’s very clever.”

 

 

“It said twenty minutes, it was only in for five. I can’t, I can’t do this Sam.”

The smoke has cleared, and Sam now sits in one of the cast iron chairs out in the garden, Dean happily ensconced on her lap, while Malcolm paces. 

“Sit down, Malc.”

She orders him in her sweetest voice.

Malcolm stops, stares at her, and then sits down with a heavy sigh.

“See, isn’t that better, Malc was making us all dizzy wasn’t he.”

Carefully, with her arm that isn’t fractured and strapped up, Sam tickles Dean’s ribs until the little boy is giggling happily.

“I should have learned not to expect sympathy or understanding from, ye.”

Malcolm folds his arms tightly across his chest, and begins to sulk.

In a completely justified action, Sam sticks out her tongue, letting Dean down from her lap, the little boy runs off to dig more holes in the garden.

“You had the oven up to high, that’s all.”

Sam leans forward across the holding out her hand for Malcolm’s, he stares at her outstretched palm for a few moments, before giving in to the urge to hold some part of his beautiful, clever, lovely wife.

He takes Sam hand in his own and smiles.

“What were you trying to make, anyway?”

“Blueberry muffins.”


	19. All Hugs, All the Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was worried that this story was getting away from it's heart, so hears some Malcolm/Chanelle bonding.

There has been a fight.

Chanelle has been sent home with a warning, a strongly worded letter, which leaves Malcolm and Sam in no doubt of what will happen if their adopted daughter steps out of line one more time.

Expelled.

Chanelle will have to leave the school, with yet another black mark against her name.

Now, is not the time to bring up the fact that Malcolm has long lobbied Sam, to send Chanelle to a local comprehensive.

They live in a nice area, the two state schools situated in their borough are good schools, with excellent exam results, and more to the point Chanelle would find it easier to fit in.

But, now is not the time. 

Sam’s gone all quiet; she only does that when she’s very, very angry.

Somehow Malcolm can’t shake the feeling that he is to blame for everything.

This evening Sam has taken over bedtime story duty, and she’s currently upstairs weaving some frankly amazing tale to Dean, while Malcolm is relegated to unpacking the dishwasher, and listening to the laughter of the little boy above him.

Well, fuck that.

It’s not his fault Chanelle decided to go all Ranging Bull, and punch another kid in its stupid mouth.

Wringing a tea towel between his hands as if he’s about to garrotte someone, Malcolm wanders out of the kitchen which still smells of smoke, and into the garden, which doesn't.

The sun is still warm, and the small square of earth they call a garden is filled with the smell of jasmine.

Malcolm Tucker might not be much in the kitchen, but he’s one hell of a gardener.  
On the edge of the decking sits Chanelle, all hunched over, and still wearing her school uniform. 

Part of him wants to go back inside and leave her to her brooding, but this is Dad Skills stuff.

So, he settles himself on the edge of the decking, his knees clicking painfully as he moves, his knees never use to do that, betrayers.

“What’s going on here, then?”

Malcolm asks, trying to mimic the thing he’s heard Sam do with her voice, so many times before, the thing that makes her seem approachable and human.

No, wait that’s not a trick of a voice, that’s just her, she, is human and approachable.

“I don’t wanna hear it.”

Chanelle shoots back, rubbing the broken skin of the knuckles on one hand with the thumb of her other.

He remembers what that feels like, the contact of another persons flesh against your fist, satisfying at first, and then the pull back, the slow dawning realisation that you have totally fucked up, and the sting of broken skin.

In his entire life Malcolm has only ever hit four people, three on account of his sister, and the other one was Glenn Cullen.

They all fucking disserved it, maybe not at the time, but they all retrospectively earned a good punching, especially Jamie, him more than any of the others.

“That looks painful.”

Malcolm nods in the direction of Chanelle’s hand, which is lying limply on her lap.

“It fucking hurts as much, too.”

With Sam out of earshot Malcolm doesn’t bother to correct Chanelle’s language.

“Who’d ye punch?”

Malcolm tries his best to sound casual.

“You know who I punched.”

A comically overweight Bumble Bee does a U-turn around a clump of Alexandra Roses, or perhaps that’s and O-turn.

“Alright, then why’d ye do it?”

It’s hard to believe that he once winkled some of the biggest secrets from the world’s most powerful people, his performance now is truly atrocious.

Chanelle doesn’t even look at him, in fact she never once looks up from her lap, her large brown eyes are cast meaningfully down.

“They we’re chatting shit about Artie, so I smacked ‘em, alright.”

Malcolm can literally see the forcefield going up around Chanelle, keeping him and everything else firmly on the outside.

Artie, Malcolm guesses must be Artemisia Drake, Mary Drake’s rather sullen daughter.

“Did she ask ye to do that?”

The last thing he wants Chanelle to turn into is some rabid dog at the beck and call of Mary Drake's daughter.

Chanelle stiffens, and turns her tear streaked face towards him.

“NO!”

She bellows the word in his face.

“I’m not that thick! People take the piss out of her, that’s all.”

Clearly losing the internal battle not to cry, Chanelle turns her face away, the juddering movement the only hint that she is crying.

Malcolm wants to, well, he actually wants to hold her, but he holds back, because this is Chanelle, and with Chanelle you always have to ask first.

So, he watches her, wracked with silent agony as she tries not to let him see her cry.

“Who said ye were thick?”

Malcolm asks, trying to keep his voice steady.

“Everyone,”

Chanelle snots, her breath catching.

“They all call me thick, and that I don’t speak right. They say I’m a common little chav, that you and Sam should have spent more money and adopted some Tibetan Whistle kid, what ever the fuck that is.”

Malcolm’s sorrow is replaced with an all too familiar emotion.

“Ye’re not thick. Do ye have any idea how hard it is to pass the entrance exam for that school? Ye did it first fucking time, with barely any schooling. Ye’re a fucking genius. And who gives a fuck if ye’re common, I’m fucking common and look at me. I’ve worked with some of the poshest fucks on the planet, and speaking right don’t mean shit, ye got brains, and balls, THAT’s what really counts.”

Malcolm chest swells at the sound of a faint giggle.

“And as for some Tibetan fucking Whistle Kid, I think Brad and Angelina might have cornered the market there.”

The next bit Malcolm really needs to say to her face.

“Look at me, Chanelle.”

“No.”

Malcolm huffs loudly.

“I am asking ye to look at me, so that I can talk to ye like ye’re an adult.”

Giving a few stray tears a quick rub, Chanelle turns to face him, her olive features blotchy, her eyes bloodshot.

“Sam and I, well, we only want ye and Dean, forever.”

Malcolm lets out a sudden ooff as he feels a pair of arms around him, as Chanelle literally throws her body into his chest, hugging him tightly.

This is their very first hug.

Malcolm carefully strokes the back of Chanelle’s hair, smiling as she clings to him.

And then just as quickly as it happened it’s all over, and Chanelle is suddenly brushing down the front of her school uniform and heading off back inside the house, with a quick hello to Sam as she goes past.

Sam.

How long has Sam been watching them?

Her face is unreadable.

Then for the second time this evening, Malcolm is assailed, this hug is a bit more cautionary on account of Sam’s arm, but comes with a side helping of an amazing snog.

“I love you, you stupid bloody man.” 

Malcolm Tucker smiles.


	20. Shot at Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some Malcolm/Sam fluff, with a hint of angst.

Malcolm opens one blood shot eye, the bedroom is filled with sunshine, morning sunshine.

How is it morning already?

Shielding his eyes from the light, Malcolm proceeds to roll over and groan into the warmth of his pillow.

“Oh Malc, come on,”

Sam says in that annoying sing-song voice.

Usually Malcolm loves the sing-song, he adores the fact that he’s lucky enough to wake up next to any part of his beautiful, amazing, talented, spectacular wife…he’s lost his train of thought.

Grudgingly Malcolm rolls onto his back, rubbing one hand across his tired face, as Sam stares down at him.

She’s smiling.

“You’re not going off to be shot at dawn; this is going to be fun.”

Malcolm tries to give her one of his classic death stares, the sort of thing that has been known to freeze the blood of junior ministers at twenty paces, but he could never look at Sam like that, and even if he really, really tried, he knows she’d just laugh at him anyway.

Sam always laughs at him, she always has, she’s never been afraid of him, he’s not really sure what she’s afraid of, and he hopes he never has to find out.

Government enforced fun, fuck.

He lifts his hand from his face, and rests it lightly against Sam’s cheek, her skin is so soft, so smooth, oh Christ he’s finished, he’ll do anything she wants him to, as long as she never stops smiling at him, loving him.

Fucking jessy!

“Malcolm.”

It usually means trouble when Sam uses his full name, that he’s done something wrong.

But instead of getting his usual ear-bashing, Sam leans down and kisses him.

It doesn’t last very long, and it’s more of a peck than a proper morning snog, the sort of kisses they use to wake up to before the kids came along.

“Stop trying to distract me.”  
All toothy grin.

Malcolm loves Sam’s toothy grin.

How could he ever distract her, but this isn’t the first time Sam has accused him of the crime, clearly Malcolm has unknown powers of distraction that only seem to work on his wife.

“Fuck it all Sam, I can’t do this.”

His in agony all over, again, as much as he doesn’t want to let Sam down, he doesn’t want to show Chanelle up.

“Why do we even have to send her to that fucking school, she hates the place. Can’t we just forget all about it, please?”

Malcolm has never had to beg Sam for anything before, and while it may appear wildly melodramatic, he feels like begging her now.

“Oh Malc, we’ve talked about this.”

They have, they’d spent most of last night talking about it, and it was decided that Chanelle would stay at the school, because it was one of the best in London, and it will set her up for the rest of her life, and who really likes school anyway?

And would it be any better if they sent Chanelle somewhere else, despite the deep well of affection Malcolm has towards the girl, he’d go as far as to call it love, she has problems, a serious chip on her shoulder, and an attitude that rivals his own.

Six months down the line, they’d probably be here all over again, the only difference would be they’d all be a year older.

Argument and counter-argument.

In the end it was tentatively decided that they’re going to give it one last try.

They always give everything one last try, eternal fucking saps.

They always end up failing spectacularly, as with his trial. 

“Now come on,”

Another kiss this time in the centre of his forehead, Sam smells wonderful, Malcolm leans into the warmth of the curve of her neck, and he wants nothing more than to bite her the way he knows, learned she likes.

How can some so tender, and sweet, and loving, like such rough sex?

Not all the time of course, for one Malcolm doesn’t have the stomach for all the hair pulling Sam seems to enjoy, they’d spent their honeymoon a mass of fucking bruises, as if hurting each other could some how ease the external pressure. 

His honeymoon with Sam that was a joke, Malcolm and Yvonne’s honeymoon had been around the Greek Island, Yvonne is one of those outdoorsy, endlessly capable types, she’d grown up in Devon learned how to ride a horse, played hockey with all the other girls, and could sail a boat, can probably still sail a boat, her and that lecturer of her’s probably have smug boating holidays with their perfect offspring and their horse faced friends.

Anyway, Yvonne had sailed them around the Greek Island in a rented Catamaran, while Malcolm had drunk far too much Ouzo, got terribly sunburned, and read Kafka.

It was probably the best holiday Malcolm ever had with Yvonne, mainly because it was the only one, their last glorious summer before he threw himself into the fire that was his career.

They tried, well to be fair, Yvonne tried, aborted trips to Paris, a weekend in Rome, where Malcolm spent most of the time on the phone shouting, in the end it was a mutual agreement that The Tuckers didn’t go on holiday.

His honeymoon with Sam took place in Malcolm’s old house; he was under investigation so he couldn’t leave the country, and the idea of going out in public had filled him with such horror that…

Not much of a start to married life, Malcolm’s only compensation was at least this wasn’t the first time Sam had done it, she’d done the whole grubby, 90’s backpacking tour with her first husband, they’d been married on some white sandy beach in Thailand, when they were about eight, well Sam had looked about eight, she’d actually been twenty-one, he'd seen the photographs.

He’d spent a far bit of his honeymoon with Sam crying, lamenting the selfish mistake he had made in marrying the best person he had ever met in his life, wishing he could just have been stronger, told her to fuck the fuck off.

On being released from prison the first thing Malcolm had done, other than burn his old clothes in a symbolic, and rather wasteful bonfire at the bottom of the garden was to book a holiday, Sam had never been to Scotland, so Malcolm took her on a tour of the Highland distilleries.

“Why do ye love me?”

Malcolm asks, holding Sam’s gaze.

“Don’t get all maudlin on me, I’m on so many painkillers, I might just lay down to some Leonard Cohen and never get up, again.” 

Sam grins, before peppering his face with kisses.

He finds himself smiling against her lips.

Why does he have to ask such stupid questions, the woman is clearly mad to throw her lot in with the likes of him.

Sam’s arm gives way, and she falls into her usual spot next to Malcolm, the sides of their head inclined together as they both stare up at separate spots on the same ceiling.

“We fit together, don’t we?”

Sam muses, as she takes Malcolm’s hand in her own, and his heart flutters as if he was a teenage boy.

“We’re both a bit crap at life in different, ways.”

Unable to hold back Malcolm snorts at this comment, the idea that Sam could be crap at anything, there’s no point in arguing, so he simply nods his head in a gesture approaching something close agreement.

“I’m not perfect, Malc.”

The woman can even read minds.

“Of course not, love.”

Malcolm teases her, his insecurities beginning to ebb away.

His fingers tighten around Sam’s warm digits, absolutely perfect.

“I can be myself when I’m with you.”

He lets her words sink in for a moment.

Malcolm knows he doesn’t disserve such happiness, but since when has anyone ever got what they disserved?

His heart swells, or his brain, anyway he feels as if he’s about to burst from sheer happiness because he’s so in love with Sam, and remarkable she loves him back.

“Right, that’s it,”

Malcolm announces as he rolls onto his side to gaze at the most beautiful woman who has ever shared his bed.

“I’m gonna bang ye’re fucking brains out, arm or no arm.”

He smiles and then she smiles.


	21. If You'd Only Use Your Powers for Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not mentions of the bunny wonders in this chapter, but hopefully you can enjoy reading it anyway.

Clara Oswin Oswald Torchwood Operative.

She takes a sip of her tea, and considers the I.D badge Martha had left behind for her the previous evening.

Clara has worked with U.N.I.T before, but then she’d only been tagging along in The Doctor’s wake, this is all her from now on.

She takes another gulp from her steaming mug, and glances around OtherClara’s kitchen, it’s just as small as it ever was, but it feels different, she doesn’t belong here, not in this kitchen, this flat, this world, it’s all wrong.

And yet…

Martha had opened up the possibility of other alternative universes, something Clara had never considered before, okay, so on a weekly basis she travels through time and space, but the idea parallel universes had never once occurred to her, that there were other versions of herself out there, and not just her, perhaps Danny as well.

Danny Pink was dead in this world, as dead as he was in Clara’s own, but she’d met Orson Pink, and she was still certain that he’d been part of her, so maybe The Doctor had got it all wrong again, maybe they’d ended up in another universe where Clara Oswin Oswald had a family with Danny Pink?

So, he could still be out there, alive somewhere.

She smiles, it’s the first time she’s been able to smile at the thought of Danny since he died.

Her Danny is dead, and that will never, ever be okay, but maybe, just maybe he’s not entirely gone.

OtherClara’s mobile phone springs into life, shaking Clara from her reserve, making her almost spill her tea.

It’s a text from her Gran, wait no, not her Gran OtherClara’s Gran asking if she fancies coming over for a natter later.

She’s twenty-eight years old, what else does Clara have to do on a Saturday night?

Clara replies with a smiley face, and a kiss, just as she hits send, she notices the time in the little white box at the top of her phone.

10:45.

Now she does actually spill her tea, all down the front of one of OtherClara’s blouses.

She’s late, late for that baking competition the one she never wanted to be involved with, the one she got roped into, the one that has essentially changed the way she views her place in the universe.  
Clara dashes off in the direction of OtherClara’s bedroom to change, mid way through tossing something grey and silky over her head, she wonders why she’s rushing, is she still going to go?

 

“I can’t believe, you’re actually dragging me to school on a Saturday.”

Chanelle complains as she throws herself into a nearby chair, blowing her fringe out of her face, and looking for all the world, exactly what she is, a sulky teenager.

Malcolm sympathises, at Chanelle’s age he’d hated school as well, it had all been just rules to break, exams to take and canings, lots and lots of canings, in fact Malcolm once held the record for the most reported canings in his school, from eleven to sixteen his poor arse had been permanently blue. 

Dean tugs on his walking reins and breaks Malcolm’s flaky concentration.

“Sammy, Sammy!”

The excitable toddler dashes in Sam’s direction dragging Malcolm along in his wake.

Sam is busy talking to Mary Drake, who is busy ticking things off a clipboard, how that woman finds the time to have any sort of functioning life outside of Number 10 is beyond Malcolm, he certainly never managed it.

“Ah Malcolm, there you are, Sam was telling me that you still haven’t decided what you’re going to bake for us today.”

Malcolm shoots Sam a look.

“Oh no Mary, ye know me never under prepared.”

His eyes glitter when he smiles.

“Thought, I’d keep it a surprise from my darling wife.”

Malcolm leans forward and plants a kiss on Sam’s cheek, pausing by her ear briefly to whisper the words.

“Ye traitor.”

Of course he doesn’t mean it, Sam is the last person on the planet who would ever betray him, they’ve been through thick and thin, and he’s always been able to trust her, the only one, outside his own family, that he’s ever been able to say that about.

Mary Drake peers down her glasses at the pair of them.

“So, what are you making?”  
The woman is as blunt as ever.

Caught on the hop, Malcolm racks his brains, his eyes widening as he tries to concoct something, anything in the small window of time allotted to him.

“Passover.”

He swallows thickly, the word just leaping into his head.

“Passover?”

Mary Drake echoes it right back at him.

“Brownies.” 

Malcolm pulls the word out from the dark recesses of his mind, remembering that weekend they spent back in April with Sam’s parents, the lowlight of which had been Sam’s Mum’s Passover Brownie Cake.

“Passover brownie cake.”

He strings the sentence together.

Mary Drake stares at him, making a note on her clip board.

“I wasn’t aware that you were Jewish, Malcolm.”

He hates the way Mary Drake says his name.

“He isn’t,”

Sam finally takes pity on him, she moves from Mary Drake’s elbow to Malcolm’s side, wrapping her not fractured arm around the small of his back.

This is solidarity.

This is marriage.

“…but, I am.”

Mary Drake writes down something else, before nodding stiffly and moving away.

“Was that the best you could come up with?”

Sam turns on him as soon as Mary Drake is out of earshot.

Dean is pulling at his reins again, keen to go over and play with his big sister.

“Yes, that was the best I could come up with.”

Malcolm shoots back with a harsh whisper.

“Do you even know how to make Passover brownie cake? Actually wait, why am I asking that, you don’t know how to make any cake.”

Sam giggles, she’s actually laughing at him, she’s in open revolt.

“That were ye’re wrong, oh beloved wife.”

Malcolm pulls his smartphone out from the pocket of his jacket.

“Ye’re Mam, emailed me the recipe and I never deleted it. So not only do I know how to make Passover brownie cake, but it’s a family recipe.”

Malcolm’s not sure why, but Sam suddenly kisses him.

“If only you’d use your powers for good.”

She teases.

 

 

Clara Oswald dashes into the school hall, and the first thing she sees is Malcolm Tucker and his wife Sam Cassidy-Tucker kissing.

It’s a shock to see The Doctor kissing anyone, but it’s not The Doctor, it’s just someone, a man who looks horribly like him.

Then she remembers that both Malcolm and Sam are dead in her Universe, but here they’re happy, and together, and both very much still alive.

Hope blossoms; after all if Malcolm and Sam could find each other again, perhaps The Doctor, her Doctor will come back for her and take her home.

“Ah, Miss Oswald you’re late, but never mind, hold this and stand there.”


	22. Existential Angst and The X Factor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are 3 main POVs in this chapter, Sam, Clara & Malcolm, hopefully you'll be able to tll them apart...anyway, I've decided that I only have 2 chapters left, so enjoy.

Sam hasn’t seen Malcolm look that stressed since they lost the election.

Of course no-one else would notice, the lines around his brow are heavier, his mouth thin and tighter, that manic glint in his eye.

Things that Sam prides herself on being the only one to notice, she’s the person who knows him the best.

 

 

The Doctor, NO!

Not The Doctor.

The man who is resolutely not The Doctor looks incredibly stressed, Clara notices because he shares a face with The Doctor, her best friend.

The furrowed brow, the thin lips, all classic signs, classic signs that only SHE, Clara Oswin Oswald can read, because no-one in the Universe knows The Doctor better than her.

No-one.

Clara is hovering by the tea urn, in the space on thirty minutes she managed to drink three cups, even for her that’s a record, if The Doctor could see her now.

She wishes he could.

She finds herself staring at Malcolm Tucker as he manages to spill half a bag of flour all over himself and his work bench.

Someone laughs.

No not someone a child laughs, a little boy, with blonde curly hair, he’s laughing and clapping, and Malcolm is smiling too, and playing up to the scene of devastation all around him.

“Ye, just wait until I get ye home.”

Malcolm warns the little boy, waving around a thick wooden spoon, and looking like a half finished ghost.

The corners of Clara’s mouth twitch upwards.

Then her smile slowly fades as she sees Sam Cassidy-Tucker stroll casually into view, catching hold of the little boy’s hand in her own, Clara watches as Sam leans forward and gives Malcolm a quick kiss. 

Malcolm wants to hold onto Sam, as long as she’s there he knows nothing really bad can ever happen to him.

“You’re magnificent.”

Sam tells him when they part.

Malcolm pulls at the fabric of his flour covered shirt, displaying it for his wife to see.

“I’m the new Mary-fucking-Berry.”

His heart sinks.

What is his problem, it’s only baking, he just has to bake a cake, Sam’s right, he’s not going to be judged and then short a dawn, get some fucking perspective. 

Malcolm use to be good a perspective, he use to have perspective coming out of his arse, but now, now everything just seems to be so massive.

He doesn’t want to disappoint Sam, because he still can’t fully believe that she’s here with him, that she shares a life with him, kids with him, there’s the fear that if he disappoints her, she might just wake up, and realise what a washed out old duffer she’s married. 

And a jailbird to boot!

Christ on a bike Sam really is mad.

“Don’t worry, we have total faith in you, don’t we Dean?”

“NO!”

The little boy giggles excitedly. 

 

 

Another kiss, really?

Is there another competition Clara hasn’t been informed the most PDAs in a minute, if so Malcolm and Sam will definitely win.

Watching them makes Clara wish she’d kissed Danny a little bit more.

Without thinking she places her index finger on the boiling metal of the tea urn, letting the scolding pain sear through her for a moment, as if such a small amount of pain could take her mind of thoughts of Danny.

“Miss Oswald?”

Clara doesn’t even realise that her eyes are closed until she opens them, and sees Sam standing in front of her.

She takes her finger away.

“Clara, call me, Clara.”

Sam smiles, a warm friendly smile, and Clara can’t help noticing that her lipstick is slightly smudged.

While Clara hasn’t actually watched Sam kissing her Doctor, Malcolm Tucker’s lips must feel like The Doctor’s, because the rest of their face is identical.

It’s all so confusing, Clara wishes Martha was with her to translate what’s going on.

Well that’s not really the only reason Clara wishes Martha was with her, despite missing Danny terribly and pinning for The Doctor, she has to admit if only to herself that she might have developed something of a crush on Doctor Jones-Smith.

“I’m Sam, and this is Dean.”

Sam introduces herself and the gorgeous little boy holding her hand.

Clara loves children, always has, always will, despite this however, she’s never been sure if she actually wanted them for herself, caring for Angie and Artie, and then teaching at Coal Hill that was one thing, as thing she absolutely loved, but travelling with The Doctor and being a Mum those were roles that could never fit together.

Meeting Orson Pink had been the spark that had let Clara know, that yes, one day she might like someone like Orson to call her his Great-Great-Great Grandmother.

She’d thought she was pregnant, just before Danny died, that’s why she’d called him that terrible, horrible, worst day of all bad days.

Not just to tell him that she loved him, but to tell him that she thought she might be having a baby, only she’d gone and got him all distracted, and then killed, and then her period had arrived two days later, and all hope of Orson Pinks were gone. 

 

 

Sam watches as the strange girl in front of her crouches down to great Dean.

Girl because Clara Oswald looks far too young to be a teacher, and strange because Sam had just seen her burning her finger deliberately on the tea urn.

“Hello Dean, it’s very nice to meet you, my names Clara.”

Dean turns away from Clara and cuddles tightly into her side, seeking reassurances that only she can give.

“I’m sorry, he’s not normally this shy.”

It’s true, Dean is the life and soul of every party, friendly, open, giggly and sweet, a living, breathing testimony to all the things Chanelle had done to protect him from the harsh reality of their life, she had taken the knocks, the jabs, her edges sharp and spiky, so that her little brother would never have to change before he was ready.

“It’s alright.”

Clara pulls herself up into her full unimpressive height, Sam towers over her at only 5ft6.

“That looks painful.”

Clara points to Sam’s fractured arm, which has been aching, and uncomfortable for most of the morning.

“The hazards of ballroom dancing.”

Sam attempts to laugh of her injury watching as Clara’s large brown eyes appear to literally inflate. 

Sam usually good a small talk, it’s one of her key strengths, being able to chat amiably away while Malcolm freaks everyone out with a death glare, but she can’t manage it with Clara.

In the end, they all stand side by side in silence, even Dean is being quiet for a change.

 

 

Clara knows she should say something, but what?

So far whenever she has seen Sam, the other woman has either been snogging the face off The Doctor…NO! Not The Doctor…

Or

Or reminding Clara of the fact that in her own Universe, Sam, the woman standing very much alive and well next to her, died a horribly painful death, at the hands of the Cybermen.

With a shiver Clara recalls Webley's World of Wonders, and how close she’d come to being Cyber-converted.  
Maybe that had happened, maybe there was another world floating around out there, yet another Parallel Universe, where The Doctor didn’t win, and Clara became a Cyberman, just like poor Sam.

How many times has Clara Oswin Oswald lived and died, already?

Clara shakes her head, such deep, dark thoughts are no place for a school baking competition, she’ll save such existential angst for when the X Factor is back on.

Do they have the X Factor here?

Her guilty pleasure, which even Danny Pink and The Doctor knew nothing about.


	23. And the Winner is...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The result is finally here...

He’s done it.

He’s baked a cake.

He didn’t burn it.

The thing wasn’t flaming cinders and regret, it was a cake.

Lumpy and oozy, and a very strange shade of brown, but it is a cake, and he Malcolm.F.Tucker has baked it.

He’s done it all for Sam and Chanelle, to make them happy, to show them that they can trust him, he can do this.

Leaning against his work bench, with more flour on him, than in the actual brownies, Malcolm realises that he’s not done a completely terrible job of the whole week.

Chanelle and Dean have been fed, and watered, they’ve gone to school and playgroup everyday in clean, semi ironed clothes.

Malcolm has taken care of Sam and the kids with only a modicum of assistance.

His really does have Dad Skills, actual working ones.

He grins like a loon at nothing.

 

“That’s, Malcolm’s.”

Sam regards the lumpy baked goods before her.

“How do you know?”

Clara asks.

Sam smiles to herself.

“I just know.”

That’s only half the truth, it’s an easy guess really, all the other Mum’s have baked proper cakes, Victoria sponges, carrot, coffee, fruit, lemon drizzle, Malcolm was the only one planning on producing brownies.

While all the other Mum’s cakes are of a similar high standard, Malcolm’s offering looks like it’s been made in a hurricane.

So, here are Malcolm’s brownies, Passover ones just for her.

Her smile widens, he’s done all this just for her and Chanelle.

His Dad Skills are improving, Sam has always known that he has them, Malcolm is a very affectionate, and loving Uncle, on the point of spoiling Colin and Issy, but this is more than just reading stories, or giving out sweets, he’s spent a week practically alone with Chanelle and Dean doing all the nitty-gritty things, and he’s managed perfectly, Sam wonders if he knows that.

“I use to have a friend like that. I knew him like that.”

Clara says whistfully, and Sam recognises the look on the younger woman’s face, loss and regret, the longing for something that is gone, and the knowing that however much you want it, it will never come back to you.

Sam had looked like that after Ed, her first husband had left her.

For months and months she’d looked like that, like Clara, pinning for the life that had been lost to her.

“Oh, dear lord, what on earth is that?”

Mary appears from seemingly out of nowhere, with a clean knife to cut into Malcolm’s brownies, which seem to have all fused together.

“Sam, thinks it’s her husband’s handy work.”

Clara giggles.

Sam hadn’t been to sure of Clara Oswald at first, she’d thought the younger woman was strange and flighty, but after having spent two hours sitting with her alone, behind the curtain on the school stage, drinking tea, and talking about nothing, with big gaps of everything, Sam has changed her mind, she likes Clara.

“You can always give it marks for appearance, it’s not necessary to ingest the thing.”

Mary looks down her nose at Malcolm’s offering.

While Sam doesn’t want to force the tasting on Clara, she feels terrible at the idea that Malcolm has gone to so much trouble, and they’re not even going to eat it.

“I’m game if you are?”

Sam doesn’t need asking twice.

“Yes!”

“Well, if you ladies are sure.”

Mary cuts into Malcolm’s brownies, depositing a neat slice on a white napkin.

Sam stares at her slice for a minute, wondering how much it will cost to have both sets of teeth replaced.

On the bright side however, she has always been fascinated by gold teeth, so maybe she’ll get a flash set of gangster grills. 

Sam closes her eyes, lifts up the slab of brownie and takes a bite.

Her teeth don’t shatter and split, they don’t dissolve with too much sugar, in fact, in fact, she swallows quickly and takes another bite.

Sam’s eyes open with the mmmm sound emanating from Clara.

The young woman is happily munching away, swaying a little from side to side as she eats and trying to keep the crumbs from her dress.

“This is really good.”

Clara announces between mouthfuls, and she’s right, Malcolm has done a really good job, it’s not up there with Sam’s Mum’s, but it’s good.

Why is she really surprised, Sam’s known her husband since she was twenty-two years old, she’s seen him battle the odds, and succeed over and over again at whatever he sets his mind too.

The trial swept all before it.

Sometimes it still feels as if Sam is still up in the gallery waiting for Malcolm’s verdict to be read out, that she’ll wake up, and all of this, their marriage, the kids, will be gone, that she’ll be standing there clutching at a bawled up piece of tissue looking down on him as the powers that be pass their judgement.

Guilty.

Even now the memory still has the power to make Sam feel sick to her very core.

The colour draining from Malcolm’s face as he realised he wasn’t going to escape this time.

All his birds were finally coming home to roost, all at once.

Sam shakes her head, banishing the memory, painting on a wide tight smile.

This is a happy day.

“Sam, Clara, you’ve tried every cake, and…”

Mary clears her throat as she regards Malcolm’s offering.

“thing.”

She concludes with a curt bob of her head.

“Have you reached a verdict?”

Mary sounds hopeful.

Sam catches Clara’s eye, they appear to be in complete agreement.

“Mary,”

Sam lets Clara do all the talking.

“Do you think it would be possible to try all the cakes, again?”

 

 

Sam’s stomach complains bitterly.

The waistband of her skirt feels too sized to small.

What possessed her to eat so much cake, how Marie Antoinette got through so much of the stuff is beyond her.

She feels sick and like a pig, she feels like a sick pig.  
It’s all Clara Oswald’s fault.

Feeling horribly bloated, Sam takes a step forward, a flash goes off as someone from the local paper takes a snap of her.

Sam stops just in front of a microphone, she takes a breath, public speaking is a nightmare.

She doesn’t look for Malcolm, or Chanelle or Dean in the crowd, she knows they’re all out there, and that enough for Sam.

Sam lifts up the piece of paper and reads…

 

 

Susan McShane is the winner of this year’s charity bake off.

Malcolm’s heart sinks a little.

“You didn’t actually think you’d win did you?”

Chanelle asks, clearly reading his disappointed expression.

Well, no of course not, but…but his bake was a damn site more fucking interesting than Susan McShane’s limp wristed Victoria Sponge.

Victoria Sponge, the establishment was winning, again.

Clutching Dean in his arms, the little boy’s chubby hands tight around his neck, Malcolm finds Sam at the side of the stage with Mary Drake and Clara Oswald. 

“I’ve always had a suspicion ye were a monarchist.” 

Mary Drake makes a noise from the back of her throat, before saying in a curt little flurry…

“Always a pleasure, Malcolm. We, must catch up soon Sam. Clara, come this way, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Mary Drake practically hauls poor Clara Oswald off in the opposite direction, that unfortunate girl.

“I like the Queen, she’s very nice, every time I meet her, she’s asks me if I’ve had a good journey.”

Malcolm rolls his eyes as Sam leans forwards and gives him a quick peck on the lips.

Bloody, perfect woman, always has an answer, a rebuke to everything, god he loves her.

Malcolm can’t help, but smile as Sam turns her attention to the kids.

“Do we get to take any of the cake home with us, or have you and Clara eaten it all?”

“Well, it’s funny you should ask that, Chanelle.”


	24. Christmas 2016

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, this is The End, thank you to everyone who read and commented, it's great to know that people enjoyed my writing...
> 
> Enjoy...

Christmas 2016

Malcolm is dozing on the sofa, content and very full, when an arm suddenly snakes its way around his middle.

He opens one eye, and smiles at Sam, who has managed to squeeze her way onto the narrow cushions next to him.

Malcolm shifts rolling onto his side, so that Sam has more room to stretch out next to him.

“You’ve got a Dad tum, already.”

Sam giggles, poking him in his rounder than usual stomach.

“It’s this fucking jumper; ye shrunk it in the wash.”

Malcolm growls against the side of Sam’s head, pointedly avoiding the fact that the jumper in question had been baggy only hours before, now however, it feels as if he’s wearing a woolly body stocking.

Sam unwraps one of the Hanukkah gelt she’d won earlier, popping the chocolate coin in her mouth, she gives him a self satisfied smile. 

Sam and Dean who had never seen a Dreidel in his life, had managed to win all of the chocolate coins, while Malcolm and Chanelle had lost with everything single spin, it wasn’t fair, Malcolm had told his assembled family exactly how unfair he thought it was.

He knows better than to ask Sam to share her winnings, so he watches as she pops another chocolate into her mouth, and then asks cautiously. 

“How are the kids?”

Sam chews for a few moments before answering.

“Dean is fast asleep, and he’s still wearing his brand new wellingtons and his Hulk costume. And Chanelle is Skyping Artemisia, I think they’re comparing present hauls.”

The first Tucker-Cassidy-Smith-Kline Christmas has been an unmitigated success.

They’d pulled the thing off.

Malcolm never had any doubt that they could do it, but Sam, poor Sam had been in a state of near panic for weeks.

The kids were happy and well fed, nobody cried, nobody hated their presents, Malcolm’s only slight reservation was that his sister Cat seemed to have taken Chanelle’s name as her gift giving theme.

“I’m still not happy about the Drake kid.”

“Oh Malc, leave her alone, she’s a very sweet girl.”

Sam elbows him playfully in the ribs.

“The kid is fine, it’s her Mother I can’t stand.” 

Although actually that’s not strictly true, Malcolm’s always had a grudging respect for Mary Drake, diligent, hard working, she’d flown under the radar for many years, due to being good at her job, and not Stuart Pearson or Cal Richards, and while he may been incredibly put off every time he finds her causally sipping tea in his kitchen with his wife, he’s never once grabbed her by the scruff of her Dior and hauled her out into the cold.

“Malc.”

Sam’s large brown eyes sparkle in the half light of the Christmas tree.

Rather than apologising for his comment about Mary Drake, Malcolm pulls Sam against him, kissing her.

She tastes like chocolate, malt whiskey and Sam.

“How are ye feeling?”

Malcolm asks, a little breathless, when they finally part.

Sam goes very quiet for a moment, her head ducked down, her fingers worry at the front of his jumper.

“Not good.”

She admits finally with a sigh, he squeezes her tight.

“But, today has been a great day.”

Sam sniffles a little, and Malcolm pulls her down against his chest, wrapping one arm around her, resting his chin against the top of her head.  
Sam’s twin sister Bex is pregnant, six months pregnant to be exact.

The news had come of something of a surprise, since Bex is thirty-nine years old, single, and had always put her career as a flight attendant ahead of everything else.

But she’d had an affair with one of her married colleagues in Air Traffic Control and now she was having a baby on her own. 

Bex had been keeping all these facts to herself, because she didn’t know how to break the news to Sam, who had never managed to reach the six month mark herself.

Bex womb is ‘normal’ and if everything goes as it should Sam will be an Aunt by May.

Sam greeted the news like the stoic, champion she is, she’d even gone so far as to research flights to Australia, so she could be there for the birth, because she wasn’t going to let her twin sister go through all that on her own.

Only later after the Skype call had ended, had Sam turned very quiet, and she’d stayed that way for days, until Dean had fallen over in the park, and Malcolm’s chatty, happy wife had come back to him.

Malcolm decides to leave that line of questioning, Sam is right, it’s been a good day, why spoil it.

“We’ve got one last present.”

Malcolm muses, as he retrieves the silver envelope from the windowsill behind the sofa, he offers it to Sam, who takes it with a questioning smile.

“Is this from you?”

She asks as she tares at the envelope, Malcolm shakes his head.

A white embossed card, with a picture of a sleek, expensive looking train on the front appears, Sam opens it, and two golden tickets fall onto Malcolm’s stomach.

“It’s from Trevor.”

Sam announces.

Malcolm turns the golden tickets over in his hands, printed on the front are the words.

London to Venice  
The Orient Express.

 

 

Clara Oswald can’t sleep; she should have known that this would happen, since she’s never managed a good night’s sleep when travelling aboard The Tardis.

Maybe it’s the engines, or lack of engines, or the fact that she’s travelling through time and space, her body doesn’t like it.

That’s why she doesn’t live on board, why after a busy day of running for her life, and saving planets, Clara prefers to return to the safety of her flat, to the comfort of her own bed, and a nice milky drink.

They’re back together, Clara Oswald and The Doctor, as they always should be.

They’re not together, together, they never could be, besides Jane Austen would definitely get jealous…but they are happy.

Clara is certain now, that this is all she will ever need from life, just The Doctor and The Tardis, and occasionally Jane, or who ever comes next to take her place.

Clara will love, but she’ll never let herself fall again, it’s too painful, too messy.

She’ll be like him, just like him, The Doctor loves, he loves her, he love the Universe, but he’s not in love, well, maybe he’s a little in love with The Tardis, no a LOT in love with The Tardis.

Clara’s fingers trace the spines of the many, many books filling The Doctor’s library, searching for something to read.

She stops.

Her eyes bulge on one particular title.

The Angry Spider by Sam Cassidy-Tucker.

Clara pulls the slim tome out of the book case, the title page opening in her hands, and there are the words, written in a fine, steady hand.

Dear Doctor,  
Thank you for showing me a little bit of the Universe.  
Good Luck.  
Sam x

 

Malcolm, Sam, Chanelle and Dean will return in…

Sam Cassidy-Tucker and The Mummy on the Orient Express.


End file.
